


Hope and Legacy

by someonestolemyshoes



Series: Parisienne Walkways [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Barebacking, Blowjobs, Bottom Kageyama, But Only a Little Bit - Freeform, Dirty Talk, Feelings, Fluff, Jealously, KageHina - Freeform, M/M, Past Relationships, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Rimming, Sex Toys, Social Anxiety, University AU, figure skating AU, figure skating kageyama, hina comes up with another Plan, hinakage, idk man yuri on ice got me like, kags gets kinky, now featuring:, past oikage mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: It sends something warm trickling all the way through him, watching Kageyama with his friends. He doesn’t stand to interfere, just watches with the smallest of smiles itching at his lips as they talk, all of them together. Kageyama even smiles, once or twice, though it’s shaky and unsure and so painfully him.Hinata sits, and he watches, and something terrible looms up inside of him.It’s…it’s those feelings, again. The awful ones, the ones that will ruin everything he and Kageyama have if he were ever to let them loose. And they’re stronger, bigger and bolder than ever, agonising where they squeeze out into every last part of him. He likes Kageyama. He likes Kageyama.And, watching him now, bonding with his friends, smiling, buckling beneath the clap of Bokuto’s hands and the scrub of Kuroo’s knuckles against his hair, his heart seizes with something so strong, so powerful it winds him.He loves Kageyama.**Alternative title; Kageyama still likes figure skating and Hinata is oblivious.





	1. Vertigo

**Author's Note:**

> Um all my friends are terrible influences and I am have no self control, so I'm continuing the figure skating au!! It got...long, a lot longer than I initially anticipated when I said, and I quote, "this probably won't be as long as the first part." How wrong I was. 
> 
> SO here you go, I guess: Chapter 1.

Hinata is swiftly learning that almost all of his previous assumptions about Kageyama are, in fact, completely wrong.

It’s not like Kageyama _isn’t_ boring—he is, the way he sleeps is still boring, and the way he eats is still boring, and the _food_ he eats is still boring—it’s just, there is an awful lot more to him than just that.

The most important thing being, Kageyama most _definitely_ knows how to have fun. 

It’s...insane, really, the difference in Kageyama once the clothes come off. He’s like an entirely new person, all hooded eyes and flushed cheeks and bitten lips, strong hands and sure fingers, nothing like the big graceless lope of him when the lights come back on.

Honestly, Hinata half-wishes Kageyama could carry some of that confidence with him outside of the bedroom. Or the bathroom. Or the living room, the ice rink, that one time in the toilets at a bar, the list goes on.

It’s not that he doesn’t like Kageyama as he is now—because he does, he is learning more and more each day that he really, truly does, even if he is clumsy and lanky and _boring_ —it’s just, he’d like if Kageyama were a little more comfortable, is all.

Sometimes, he’s fine. Sometimes when the nights are cold or classes have been draining, they’ll lie in bed—Hinata’s, usually, with all the cushions and extra blankets for optimum cosiness, because Kageyama is the biggest bore with the barest bed _ever_ —and Kageyama will be content to curl an arm around his waist and press his face into his hair, and in those quiet moments, Hinata wouldn’t change a thing.

But then there are other times, like right now for instance, where Hinata is resting his head on Kageyama’s thighs and humming his way through an old volleyball magazine, and Kageyama is completely and totally stiff beneath him.

He sits with his back to the wall like a big frowny cardboard cutout of himself, glaring at his wardrobe like it’s done something terrible to offend him. At times like this, Hinata still sort of wishes Kageyama were just a tiny bit less...well, Kageyama.

Hinata peaks up at him over his magazine. From this angle he can perfectly see the jut of his lips where they’re pouted, a little dry and a little chapped from all the time he spends out in the cold, and the muscles ticking along his jaw as he grinds his teeth together. If it were anybody else in the world, ever, Hinata thinks, it wouldn’t be a good look at all.

But, as it stands, it’s Kageyama, and it’s _irritating_ how well it suits him.

Hinata closes his magazine and smacks it to Kageyama’s chest. The glossy paper thuds against his shirt, crinkling, and the top corner _thwacks_ into the little peak of bare skin at his collar.

Kageyama blinks once, twice, a few times in quick succession and then he looks down at Hinata with his eyes all clouded, scrunched beneath his brows like he’d forgotten, for a moment, where he was.

Hinata hits him again.

“What did the wardrobe do this time?”

Kageyama’s brows loosen, just a little, but then something must hit him, something weighty and invisible smacks him over the face because he starts like he’s been struck and he glowers, pinching his fingers into Hinata’s hair.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, and Hinata snickers.

“You look like you’re trying to pick a fight, is all,” he says.

Hinata half-hopes Kageyama might start something. Arguing, lately, has been less of a chore and more of a pastime, something almost like fun for them, and it’s nice to see a little animation in Kageyama’s face now and then where sex or skating isn’t concerned.

But this time, Kageyama doesn’t. His mouth opens, and then it closes again, and the fingers tugging Hinata’s hair loosen to scratch absently at his scalp.

“Just thinking,” he says. Hinata rolls to his side to stare at the steady swell of Kageyama’s stomach as he inhales. He drops his ear to Kageyama’s thighs, rests his fingers loose on Kageyama’s leg, so close to his own mouth that his breath ghosts warm over the skin.

“You’ll hurt yourself if you keep that up,” he tries again, but Kageyama just hums, eyes roving right back to the wardrobe.

See, times like _this_ , Hinata would rather have Ice Kageyama or Sex Kageyama for company. He looks...a little lost, honestly, like this; buried too far back in his own brain for Hinata to reach him.

It’s odd to think that not so long ago, he used to kind of _like_ it. He used to like the quiet, used to thoroughly enjoy imagining he had the whole place to himself with no regard for Kageyama’s presence at all, used to love that Kageyama could just...melt away, into nothing, ice into water and water to air. Those things were the _positive_ aspects of sharing his living space with Kageyama.

Hinata teases his fingers a little closer to Kageyama’s groin with grin pinching at his cheeks.

How times have _changed_.

* * *

As the weeks go by, Hinata notices that Kageyama is developing something of a habit. 

That is, he’s started staring. A lot.

It’s not like he’s never stared before; he used to, sometimes, especially if they’d been talking (shouting) or arguing (shouting) and a couple of times when they hadn’t been communicating at all. In those instances, Hinata often hadn’t even noticed Kageyama was  _t_ _here_ , in the same room, until he looked up to find eyes on him.

But now it’s...well, it’s most days they’re spending time together. It’s in the flat, and it’s when they’re buying groceries, and it’s when they’re walking to classes or from classes or grabbing coffee before they head to the library.

Hinata wonders if Kageyama even knows he’s doing it. Probably not, because Hinata has noticed he does have another, suspiciously similar habit, of just...staring off into space, and honestly, there’s a high chance the two are somewhat related. He’d be content to assume and leave it at that, if it weren’t for the fact that whenever Hinata meets his eyes—more often than not they sit big and round, embracing the little breathing room they have before he starts frowning _again_ —he blushes.

Not just a tiny little bit, not like...a dusting over his cheeks, the barest of pinks settling in the skin. No, he goes _hard_ , red all up his neck and his jaw and his cheeks, fills him right up to his hairline and Hinata thinks it might turn his hair, too, it’s just too dark to see it.

Hinata can feel him doing it right now. They’re walking home from the rink, muffled deep in their coats, draped in hats and scarves and gloves to chase away a little of the early Autumn chill.

Hinata is cold. He’s _freezing_. But there is a big, warm, burning patch right on the side of his face where Kageyama’s eyes drill into him and for a while, he lets it happen. It warms him, just a little; runs some of the cold from his bones.

“You’re staring again,” he says after a time, and his cheek grows cold. Bitter air swoops in, nips at his nose and cheeks until they blush. Kageyama clears his throat beside him.

“Was not,” he says. Hinata turns and sure enough, Kageyama’s face is blood red, even as a strong gust of cold wind batters him. Hinata punches at his shoulder with one mitten clad hand and sneaks into the empty space between them to leech a little heat.

The same old argument makes its rounds, swinging back and forth between them with the easy sway of their arms. Kageyama, to his credit, sticks strong to his convictions even in the face of immediate and consistent failure, because it doesn’t matter how much he says _was not_ , and _did not_ , and _you wish_ , Hinata _knows_.

“I don’t mind,” he says, shrugging a shoulder. Kageyama’s eyes flick to his face and away again.

It’s true, he doesn’t mind. Not really. It’s just...it’s Kageyama, and it’s just - it’s something he does, like figure skating, or being boring, or being irritatingly and, frankly, irrationally good in bed. It’s a part of him, in it’s own weird way, and Hinata supposes that it’s a package deal: take it or leave it.

Honest truth, he’d much rather take it.

The wind gives a sudden roar, blows so strong it ruffles Hinata’s scarf about his face and sweeps right up his nose.

“It’s so _cold_ ,” Hinata moans, dragging his hat lower about his ears. “My brain’s gonna freeze.”

“I told you to—”

“—I _know_ , and I’m _wearing_ one.” Hinata tugs on his hat a little more, pokes his fingers against his head in case Kageyama missed the garish knitwear (like he could have, really, when Hinata’s hat is made of so many very different, very vibrant colours) and tucks his hands beneath his armpits for warmth.

The inside of Hinata’s nose gives an ominous tingle.

He stops, wrinkles his face right around the middle, scrunching his nose to fight the itch. Kageyama takes a couple more steps before he stops, too, turning on his heel and bouncing a little on his toes.

“Dumbass, hurry _up_ ,” he says. Hinata holds up a finger inside his mitten. He is busy waging a silent war inside his nose. It’s willpower versus whatever it is that his body is trying to forcibly eject via his nostrils, and Hinata is fighting a losing battle.

He sneezes. Violently. The momentum of it shudders his shoulders, curls his torso in on itself and it hurts a little, truthfully, pangs somewhere deep in his chest.

Luckily, one sneeze was enough, and equally luckily, all that came out of him was an awful lot of dry air. He sniffles anyway, just in case, and wipes at his cold nose with the back of his hand.

“Okay, I’m good,” he says, but when he moves to go he steps right into Kageyama’s shadow.

Kageyama isn’t moving. He’s staring, _again_ , but this time there _is_ a soft blush on his cheeks. It colours the pallor of him nicely; he’s usually a little tan, not quite as white as he is out in the cold, but the pink makes him look just a little more lively beneath the glow of the streetlights.

He’s got a glazed look in his eyes where they’re rested loosely on Hinata’s face. Loosely, because they’re a little out of focus in their sockets, and his mouth sits open just a little, enough for Hinata to peak the glint of teeth behind his lips.

He doesn’t need Hinata to point it out, this time. He shakes himself out of it with a tiny little jerk of his head and spins on the spot.

“Come on.”

Hinata trots a couple of steps to keep up. Kageyama is walking with big, long strides, one for every two of Hinata’s little ones.

“Hey,” Hinata says, jogging a little to stay by Kageyama’s side. He ducks his head enough to catch Kageyama’s gaze where it is staring, angry and pouty and... something else Hinata can’t quite place, at the ground. “Hey, Kageyama, stare at me some more. It keeps me warm.”

Kageyama shoves his face away with the palm of his hand and Hinata snickers into the warm fabric. He bats it down with a grin, and presses in even closer to Kageyama’s side as they walk.

Things pass in silence, for a little while. Kageyama doesn’t stare at him anymore, but he does keep glaring at the pavement and Hinata is a little impressed it isn’t quaking with fear because hell, he would be, if Kageyama were looking at him like that.

“I wasn’t staring.”

It comes out of nowhere, mists so softly Hinata barely hears it beneath the soft howl of the wind.

Kageyama says it quietly, and the words are thick with something shaky and concerned, and Hinata is abruptly reminded that this is another one of Kageyama’s _things_ : insecurity. He’s _shy_.

Hinata half wants to pick at him for it—it’d be fun, he thinks, to poke and prod at him, just a little—but the other half of him feels almost bad, because suddenly he looks uncomfortable, both too big and far too small at the same time, and his feet seem to catch and drag with every graceless step and Hinata’s stomach fills with something cold and hard.

“I know,” he says, nudging Kageyama with his elbow—gently, because he thinks even one good gust of wind might knock him down. “I was _joking_ , stupid _._ ”

Kageyama just grunts.

The rest of the walk home is...it’s awkward. It’s been months since Hinata has felt even a little bit uncomfortable around Kageyam so this, it’s a weird kind of torture. They walk like they’re not even together, with a whole person's worth of space between them, and even when they get home they don’t say a word. Kageyama showers, and Hinata showers, and they both get dressed and climb into bed and there isn’t even a single _good night_ passed between them.

And it’s hours later before Hinata manages to fall asleep.

* * *

“I’ve seen people spin way faster than that, Kageyama!” 

Kageyama kicks his toe pick to the ice to halt his momentum and stares, incredulous, into the stands.

“Yeah, stupid,” he calls, panting through the flush of his cheeks and the heave of his shoulders, “national champions, or olympiads, or _world_ champions. _They_ spin faster, I spin just fine.”

The rink is open and bare save for the two of them. Hinata’s breath mists on the air before him in big, puffy clouds and out on the ice, Kageyama’s does the same.

It’s been a week since their weird walk home and Kageyama has largely been ignoring that anything was amiss at all. Hinata, for his part, hasn’t brought it up. It makes him squirm, thinking about Kageyama like that; all slouched and moping and plain uncomfortable. He likes him a lot better exactly like he is now, standing tall and proud and glowering at him from the centre of the rink, hands on his hips, not a worry in sight.

“It’s hard, dumbass. You’ve gotta learn how to go that quick.”

Hinata bites back a grin.

“Can’t be _that_ hard.”

Kageyama swings a skate-clad foot, kicking up fine chips of ice. They sit around the hems of his jeans like stars.

“ _You_ try then, if you think it’s so easy.”

Hinata huffs and folds his arms over his chest. Kageyama’s fists are clenched at his sides, the way they do when he gets full to the brim of anger and frustration with nowhere to put it.

“I will, and I’ll be _way_ better than you.”

Hinata knows this isn’t true. He knows, because Kageyama has years of experience under his belt and Hinata has been on skates once, in his life, that he can remember and if memory serves him well, things on that occasion did not end well.

Kageyama scoffs.

“Yeah okay, sure. Whatever. I’m not gonna try and spin faster—which is _dangerous_ , by the way—just because you’re an asshole.”

Hinata digs his hands beneath his thighs and bounces his legs, grinning. Kageyama looks at him like he half knows what’s coming and Hinata watches the fire build in him, burn behind his eyes as he waits for the retort poised on Hinata’s tongue.

“You just don’t wanna try ‘cuz it makes you dizzy.”

“Does not.”

“Does so.”

“Does _not_.”

“How not?” Hinata asks. His voice booms around the empty rink, echoing between countless upturned seats, ricocheting off the ice. Kageyama kicks himself off and glides a loop around the edge of the rink.

“Practice,” he says. “You gotta keep your eyes straight, so everything’s spinning in one direction. And just...do it lots, until you don’t get dizzy anymore, I guess.”

“So, what I’m getting is,” Hinata says, “you’ve never tried spinning faster, and if you do, you’ll get all dizzy because you’ve never practiced.”

Kageyama comes to a stop with his toes banging into the dasher. He hooks his elbows against the barrier and cocks his jaw; Hinata hops from his seat and springs down the stairs.

“That’s...not even a little bit what I was getting at.”

Hinata shrugs his shoulder. He steps up to the barrier, too, just close enough that Kageyama has to stretch an arm out to reach him, and he dances the tips of his fingers over the length of Kageyama’s, tickling at his palm.

“So, then,” he says, “spin faster. What’s a little dizziness anyways?”

“I’ll try later.” Kageyama’s voice comes all breathy and murmured, low, rumbling over a tone that sends shivers down Hinata’s spine. Kageyama catches his fingers and tugs until Hinata’s stomach is flush to the barrier, arm looped loose over Kageyama’s shoulder.

Kageyama’s breath ghosts over Hinata’s face. It’s warm, sways the hair on Hinata’s forehead so it teases at his skin, dips into his eyes. Hinata nudges his nose up along Kageyama’s and smiles against the press of his lips.

“I’ll show you dizzy.” He says it in that same voice, all deep and gravelly and _bedroom_ and Hinata barely holds back a whimper. His knees quiver, wobbling like jelly beneath him, and Kageyama curls a palm against the side of his neck to keep him steady. His thumb plays over Hinata’s pulse point, presses just enough that the pressure swims behind his eyes.

“How?” It comes out on a gasp, high and airy from right out of Hinata’s chest. He doesn’t _need_ to ask, already knows what the answer will be but _god_ , he wants to hear it.

“Strip you down,” Kageyama says, trails his palm from Hinata’s neck to his shoulder and in a long, agonizingly slow line down the centre of his back. “Open you up.” His fingers tease at Hinata’s belt and Hinata keens, mouth open, jaw slack and panting.

“Mhm.”

Kageyama’s teeth feel wicked against the curve of his jaw, sharp and taunting where they catch on his skin.

“Aren’t you gonna ask what’s next?”

“Wha— _ah_ —what’s next?”

Kageyama’s tongue ghosts against the lobe of his ear and his teeth nip at him, biting.

“Get you nice and spread for me.”

“ _Yes_.”

“And then I’ll fuck you ‘till your head _spins_.”

* * *

It’s one Saturday night, the sky stretched big and endless and inky black above him, that Kageyama greets Hinata at the door to the rink with one pair of skates on his feet and another pair in his hands. 

They’re hooked over his fingers by the laces, swinging slow and ominous like a pendulum before Hinata’s eyes. Kageyama lifts them a little higher and they twist, long, sharp blades winking with the hall light, and Hinata stares a little longer before shaking his head.

“No,” he says, “no way, Kageyama, I’ll _die_.”

Kageyama swings the skates in his hand and turns, leading the familiar path down the corridor, past the hatchway and through the locker room, and when they get into the rink he stops, kicks the seat of one of the chairs down, and points at it.

“Sit,” he says. Hinata shuffles from foot to foot and digs his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. It’s...it’s not that he’s scared or anything because he’s not, he’s definitely not, it’s just, well, Kageyama is _so_ much better than him—by virtue of the fact that he can stand still on the ice without falling on his ass, nevermind moving—and Hinata absolutely does _not_ like the idea of being the worst one here.

“I will die,” he says again, “and then you’ll have to clean my corpse off the ice before morning and I think they’d probably fire you, so it’s best if I just stay in the stands like usual.”

“Nope,” Kageyama says, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, “no, you’re gonna get on the ice and show me how fast _you_ can spin.”

Hinata looks at the skates and whines. He stomps a foot, and Kageyama rolls his eyes.

“What are you, five?”

“Five months older than _you_ ,” he says, and then he frowns and adds, “and also another one.”

Kageyama’s mouth pinches, and Hinata wonders for the briefest of moments if he might _laugh_ , like really, honestly laugh, but then he coughs and thrusts the skates to Hinata’s chest.

“Just put them on.”

Hinata knows there is no use arguing. It’s not like Kageyama is _really_ gonna make him do all those spins and jumps and stuff, not on his first time, and Hinata keeps telling himself that as he drops to his seat with his tongue poked between his teeth at Kageyama, and he tells himself again and again that this will be absolutely, one hundred per cent _fine_ as he kicks off his trainers.

“Wrong foot, stupid,” Kageyama says the moment Hinata pokes his toes into one of the skates. He feels his cheeks grow hot and he huffs.

“I know that,” he says, switching sides and shoving his foot into the right boot. Kageyama watches him with his arms folded, hip propped against the barrier, and Hinata takes all the time the world has to offer to fasten up his laces.

“Hurry up.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Hinata grumbles, even though they both know it’s not true. Kageyama rolls his eyes, then, and he walks a few stiff, straight-legged steps and stoops to kneel at Hinata’s feet.

“It’s already late, idiot. We don’t have all night.”

He shoos Hinata’s hands away, and Hinata lets them settle in his lap. Kageyama’s fingers are warm as they tuck his jeans a little higher up his legs, skirting over his skin and bristling goosebumps where they tease over him. He tugs the laces tighter, so harshly that Hinata’s foot kicks up a little off the floor.

“Keep them on tight,” he says, “if you can lift your heels off the footbed, they’re not tight enough.”

Hinata wiggles his foot in the boot Kageyama tied. There’s no give, barely enough for his feet to breathe in, but Kageyama seems happy as he wobbles Hinata’s boot from side to side.

“Why so tight?” Hinata says, rubbing at his shin while Kageyama works on the other boot. He yanks the laces forward until Hinata’s leg screams, and then he starts tying.

“They’ve gotta support your ankles right, or you’ll hurt yourself. It’s especially important for your spindly little legs.”

“My legs aren’t spindly!”

“Are so.”

Hinata kicks at Kageyama’s knee, although he takes care to keep the move gentle, very conscious of the weight of his boots and the big, pointy blades adorning them.

When Kageyama seems happy, he slaps the side of Hinata’s skate and stands.

“Alright, come on.”

And then he goes. He steps off onto the ice and skates a lap before Hinata has even wobbled his way to the barrier and then he stops, a few metres out into the rink, and braces his hands on his hips.

“What are you waiting for?” he calls.

Hinata grips the barrier until his knuckles go white. He stares at his feet, and then at the ice, and then at Kageyama and back again. He’s unsteady enough on solid ground, nevermind out _there_. He wriggles his toes in the little breathing room his feet have.

“Come _help_ me.”

“It’s not hard,” Kageyama says, “just get on the ice and...move, just like walking.”

Hinata hugs the edge of the barrier close to him and stretches one foot, toe first, towards the ice. His teeters it around to find purchase where there most certainly isn’t any and, after a moment, shifts his weight a little further along the barrier and searches for the space beside his first foot with his second. He can see Kageyama from the corner of his eye, watching him with his lip caught between his teeth.

“Don’t laugh!”

“I’m not laughing!” He calls back, but there is a tight little waver to his tone and Hinata groans, tucks his toes up against the dasher. The ice, he swears, is moving _for_ him, ferrying him where he doesn’t want to go and one foot turns inwards, slips back.

“Kageyamaaa,” he says, twisting his head to look for him. He’s swinging his feet in and out in little loops where he stands, one hand in the pocket of his hoodie and the other fisted over his mouth. His eyes look big and dark and shiny under the overheads, but it’s not...not the big and dark and shiny Hinata is used to. There’s nothing _heavy_ in it, none of that intensity that lights a fire in him.

They are full, full to bursting with something Hinata has never, ever seen on Kageyama’s face before: amusement. Raw, unadulterated _mirth_ , and they are swimming with it. Hinata’s chest does a funny little pang and something warm leaks through him, fills him from throat to chest to stomach and all the way down to his toes.

It’s enough that, for a moment, Hinata forgets it’s directed at him.

But only for a moment.

“You said you weren’t laughing!” Hinata yells, petulant, and Kageyama barks out a deep, rumbling boom of a laugh and steeples both hands before his lips.

“Sorry,” he says, insincere, “sorry, I’m sorry, but you look so _stupid_.”

“I don’t know how to skate!” He whines, and Kageyama cocks his head to one side.

“You’re not gonna learn if you keep clinging to the edge, either. Come on, just get _out_ here.”

“Come help me,” he says again, and Kageyama rolls his eyes, but skates the distance between with one smooth kick of his toes. He twists into his stop, shadowing Hinata against the barrier, and stares down at him.

“You gotta hold onto me, stupid, or I’ll fall.”

Kageyama looks momentarily conflicted. It occurs to Hinata, then, that Kageyama has probably never tried coaching a new skater in his _life_ ; it’s natural to him, now, and Hinata thinks there’s a very high chance he’s forgotten what it’s like to _not_ feel at home on the ice.

One of his hands closes over Hinata’s wrist.

“Let go of the barrier then,” he says. Hinata’s fingers grip a little tighter and Kageyama’s do, too, tugging gently.

“Just...just come on. I’ve got you, idiot, so let go.”

Hinata does. Slowly, at first, he unwraps his fingers from the board and his loose arm follows where Kageyama leads it, out, out towards the middle of the rink, Hinata’s body turns with it, feet rocking and wobbling to twist until he is face to face with Kageyama.

Kageyama holds out his spare palm.

“Other hand.”

Hinata stares up at him, eyes a little pinched.

“Don’t let go, okay?”

Kageyama nods, and Hinata loosens his grip on the barrier. Immediately his body feels unstable, unsteady, and even though his feet aren’t _supposed_ to be moving they do, scrabbling to keep him upright. He locks one hand tighter against Kageyama’s wrist and grabs at him with the other, fisting into the fabric of his hoodie.

“Don’t grab me there, dumbass!” Kageyama growls, one arm pinwheeling in a lost attempt to steady them. Hinata kicks his feet— _just like walking_ , Kageyama said, _my ass—_ and shoves his hand deeper against Kageyama’s chest.

And as Hinata’s body careens, Kageyama’s does, too, tipping with his momentum and toppling back, landing with a _thump_ on the ice and Hinata falls with a screech, smackind down on top of him.

Hinata keeps his face pressed where it rests against Kageyama’s chest. This is it, he thinks; this is how he dies. This is how skating will kill him—with Kageyama as a proxy—and for a moment, he lets himself dwell on it. Will Kageyama strangle him? Bash him to death? Perhaps he’ll slit his throat with his blades - that’d be best, Hinata thinks. Fastest.

Kageyama grumbles, raises himself up on his elbows, and Hinata prays to whatever god is listening that his mother knows that he loves her, and that he’s sorry about that vase he broke when he was nine, and that she was right, it _was_ him who spilled water on her laptop last summer and he is very, very sorry.

“How,” Kageyama says, a little dazed, “how did you fall over without _moving_.”

“You fell too,” Hinata says, and Kageyama growls low in his chest.

“Because _you_ pushed me!”

“Because _you_ didn’t hold on to me, like you said you would!”

“I did! I—” Kageyama stops, takes a long, deep breath. “Get up. We’ll try again.”

It takes an awful, awful lot of manoeuvring to get them both on their feet. Kageyama is _fine_ , no trouble, but neither Hinata’s legs nor the ice want to co-operate beyond that.  They go down twice, the pair of them, and Hinata hits the ice more times than he can count before they’re finally up and, albeit slowly, moving.

Kageyama’s hands are soft where they hold his. He’s got long fingers, Hinata thinks, watching them where they’re gripped against him, anchoring him where he is floundering. They’re long and _warm_ despite the chill, wrapping his skin. Hinata lets his own fingers curl a little deeper beneath the cuffs of Kageyama’s hoodie, pressed to his pulse point as Kageyama leads him backwards around the rink.

“I think I’m getting it,” Hinata says after a while, tongue poking against his lip to keep his focus. Kageyama hums, and his grip loosens, just a little. Hinata squawks, and scrambles to keep a hold of him.

“ _Don’t_ let go,” he warns.

“I thought you said you were getting it,” Kageyama says, and there’s that amusement again, tickling at the corners of his eyes.

“I _am_ ,” Hinata says indignantly. “But I don’t wanna fall over—”

“—again.”

Hinata narrows his eyes at him.

“ _Again_ , so keep ahold of me.”

“Alright,” Kageyama says. Something on his face goes sly, then, and Hinata has one small moment for the sense of impending doom to wash over him before Kageyama stops, and kicks towards him. Hinata’s skates slide backwards. “But you can go backwards for a while.”

Kageyama pushes him along and Hinata locks his arms, keeps himself tucked in close to Kageyama’s frame as they go. He doesn’t _dare_ move his feet, instead let's Kageyama push him along like a skating frame, and after a few long, smooth strides from Kageyama they twist, abrupt, and Hinata’s heels clip hard into the barrier.

Kageyama crowds him in, pressed so close his toes lock against the barrier, too, and Hinata can feel his breath fanning over his face, feel it stretch his chest and shudder back out again, feel the frantic thrum of his heart behind his ribs.

“This isn’t skating,” Hinata says—whispers, because his throat has closed so tight he can’t get anything else out—and Kageyama shrugs a shoulder, leans to pepper tiny, barely-there kisses across Hinata’s jaw.

“Bored of skating,” he says, “you suck at it.”

“I do not.” He does. Hinata knows he does. Kageyama doesn’t reply, just keeps on kissing him, ghosts a path from his jaw down his neck, stops right against the neckline of his jumper to suck a bruise against him and Hinata moans, sinking his fingers into Kageyama’s hoodie where it rests at his hips.

“Off the ice,” he says, but Kageyama shakes his head and he shifts, nudges his knee up between Hinata’s legs to grinds against him. Hinata’s feet wobble.

“Here,” Kageyama says. Hinata head whirls. Kageyama’s leg is making a wreck of him, dragging thin little whimpers from his throat as he presses down against it. He’s flagging half-mast and sweating when Kageyama stops, pulls his thigh away, and sinks to his knees the ice between Hinata’s legs, eyes rolling up at his face.

Hinata drags the sides of his hoodie up a little way before he lets go, unclenching stiff, shaking fingers and bracing them instead on Kageyama’s shoulders. His thumbs tickle against the hair at Kageyama’s neck, stroking soft, shuddering lines over the skin as Kageyama’s hands draw up to his belt.

“‘Yama,” he breathes, and his feet slide out from under him, crashing into Kageyama’s knees. Kageyama’s eyes don’t leave his, hooded below thick lashes. He shakes his head, pulls the loose end of the strap through a couple of belt loops.

“You’re gonna have to keep still,” he warns. His voice bleeds out from somewhere low in his throat, deep and raspy in the silence.

“Can’t,” Hinata gasps as his belt comes loose, Kageyama’s fingers pressing where he is tented to unfasten his fly. “Can’t, Kageyama, off the ice. Please.”

Kageyama pushes the hem of his jumper up and plants a hot, wet kiss against the hair trailing just above his waistband. Hinata moans, grips Kageyama’s shoulders a little harder and tips his head back. His feet strain where they rest against Kageyama’s knees.

“Hold the barrier.”

Hinata does, drags his hands from Kageyama’s neck and white-knuckles the dasher instead, elbows curled over it for good measure.

“Good,” Kageyama says, softly. Hinata breathes out a shaky moan as Kageyama laves at his skin, swirls his tongue over his belly button and tugs the front of his jeans open.

He doesn’t drag them down, just pushes the hem of Hinata’s boxers low enough to free him. He holds him in one hand—he’s still half-hard but his blood is pumping, feeding, swelling him against Kageyama’s palm—and shifts to kiss along the length of him in the same drawn, open-mouthed presses.

“ _Haa,_ Kage— _ha—_ yama.”

Kageyama hums against him. The vibration rumbles through him and he jerks, kicks at Kageyama’s knees again, tightens his grip against the barrier until his fingers sting.

He rolls his head forward. It feels heavy, leaden, weighed down with a searing kind of heat but it feels fuzzy, too, stuffed full of cotton and it lolls on his neck as he looks down at Kageyama.

He’s _still_ looking at him, peeking up through his lashes even as he presses a kiss to the head of Hinata’s weeping cock. A tiny trail connects his bottom lip to Hinata’s head even as he pulls back, hangs his mouth open and pants hot air over him.

“You look _incredible_ ,” he breathes, crowds so close his lips tease over Hinata, “so fucking good, Shouyou. You know that?”

Hinata’s blood fights for space between his dick and his cheeks. He knows what Kageyama must be seeing; his face, flushed red, lips pink and swollen from his biting them, and he knows how his eyes must look, has watched them in the mirror with his hand braced to the frame, Kageyama fucking into him from behind with a fist wrapped around his cock. He knows the blow of them, the swell that stretches until only the very edges sit bright, amber in the white lights.

“So hot for me,” Kageyama goes on, and Hinata’s knees tremble.

“Kageyama, _hng_ , fuck, please, please please,” he chants, over and over, as Kageyama’s warm, plump lips press against his head. He nudges closer slowly, opens them out over Hinata’s cock and his tongue finds his slit, twists to press against it. Hinata _writhes_ , straining to keep his hips still. It’s not that he’s worried about Kageyama; he knows he could take it, if he really started moving, has seen Kageyama with his nose pressed in the coarse hair at his crotch countless times before. It’s just, it’s taking full engagement of his abs to keep his whole body steady, keep his feet still on the ice, and Kageyama has shifted the block of his knees so there’s no back up should he slip.

Kageyama withdraws, points Hinata’s cock up against his stomach to lick a long, wet stripe up the underside of him. Hinata twitches, leaks against his jumper.

“Hold still.”

And then Kageyama takes him in. He sucks him down to the hilt, swallows him, engulfing Hinata in the hot press of his throat. Hinata can feel the barest scrape of teeth against him, a warning, and he tightens his stomach to keep himself rigid as Kageyama’s throat closes around him.

“ _O-oh_ ,” Hinata gasps. His elbows lock tight over the barrier. Kageyama’s hands brace against his skates and Kageyama feels the soft, gentle squeeze of his fingers, feels the weight of him balanced over his stationary boots.

Hinata’s thighs quake. Not only is he supposed to be keeping _himself_ steady, he’s now charged with Kageyama’s care, too. The thought sends a thrill of fear through him and his ankles wobble in his boots.

If Kageyama feels the shift, he doesn’t seem to mind. His eyes are closed, and Hinata looks down at the hollow of his cheeks, the swell below his jaw where Hinata’s cock sits in his throat, milked by every swallow, his lips cushioned up against Hinata’s groin and he groans, long and loud, swelling in Kageyama’s mouth.

Kageyama’s eyes open slowly. He looks cloudy, lidded, as fuzzy as Hinata feels, and he stares through through his lashes, his fringe, stares with eyes dark as the sky outside and Hinata’s body shudders, tiny little whimpers coughing their way out of his throat.

“I’m gonna come,” he breathes, as his body goes taut. “K _-ah-_ geyama, _haah_ , To-Tobio, I’m gonna come.”

Kageyama doesn’t make to move off of him. Instead he sucks a big breath through his nose and squeezes at Hinata’s ankle and then he swallows, once, twice, again and again in quick succession and Hinata shakes, his whole body stuttering, drawing tight, and then he snaps like a string and spills right down Kageyama’s clenching throat.

Kageyama pulls away with a wet pop. Hinata pants, twitching, as Kageyama licks at his lips. His chest is heaving—Hinata hadn’t really thought about it before but, he thinks, it can’t be all that easy regulating breaths through your nose—and he stays still and silent while Kageyama catches his breath and climbs to his feet.

He tucks Hinata back into his boxers and fastens his jeans for him. Hinata’s hands are still dug into the barrier, nails chipping the paint over the board, and Kageyama gives him a lazy kind of grin as he picks them free and knots them with his own.

“We’re gonna get in trouble for this one day,” Hinata breathes. “Don’t they have like, security cameras?”

“They do,” Kageyama says, and Hinata’s body snaps rigid, “but they’re turned off on the rink at night. Saves money, only running the ones on the doors when there’s nobody here.”

Hinata sags with the breath he blows out. He leans his weight on Kageyama’s chest. His stomach _hurts_ , aches with the work-out the muscles have been through and his legs do, too, arms as well; all of him feels an awful lot like jelly.

Even still, he can feel the dig of Kageyama’s cock against him. He’s tired, honestly, and Kageyama must know so because even as Hinata reaches for him he shakes his head, nudges his hand away.

“I can wait,” he says.

Hinata nods, and then he stretches, cranes his neck. He can’t get on his toes in skates—probably could, he thinks, because he’s seen Kageyama do it, but he’s a little too tired and a lot too inexperienced to try—and so he waits, face upturned, for Kageyama to dip himself a little lower and when he does, Hinata plants a soft kiss to his mouth.

They take the walk home in silence.

Hinata feels warm all over, fuzzy from his head to his toes and brimming with a hazy kind of happiness, and Kageyama seems content enough, with the lazy swing of their hands and the press of Hinata’s head to his shoulder.

* * *

They have their first fight on a Friday. 

Their first _real_ fight, that is, the first one where the shouting means shouting and the words mean war.

It starts much like usual; a jibe, a come back, a hollow insult or two and before Hinata knows it, he and Kageyama are at opposite ends of the room and the windows are rattling in their frames.

“What the hell are you shouting at me for?” Hinata roars, smacking his hand down on a cushion. Kageyama halts his pacing and points an accusing finger.

“Because you don’t know when to shut your _fucking_ mouth, Hinata!”

That’s...that’s about the point Hinata knows this is serious. It’s not like Kageyama to swear at him, not when they’re arguing. He’s only ever heard Kageyama use that word when they’re - well, now isn’t the time to think about that.

“What, because I pointed out the obvious? Jeez, Kageyama, I’m just _saying_ I can’t spend all my time with you! I have other friends, unlike _someone_ —”

“—that,” Kageyama jabs his finger in mid-air, “that is what I’m talking about. Fine, spend the night somewhere else, I really don’t care, but _don’t_ —”

“—don’t what?”

Kageyama huffs out a breath. He’s steaming, rage pouring out of his ears and Hinata is fuelled by it. It seems whatever Kageyama is feeling in any situation is completely contagious, and raw anger, apparently, is not an exception to that rule.

“Don’t treat me like I’m a damn chore!”

“Well, sometimes you are!” Kageyama’s face flattens, drops, and Hinata stares at him, his chest heaving. “Sometimes it’s like...like I’m a _babysitter_. You’re so _needy_ , Kageyama. Find some other people to hang out with.”

“Like it’s that easy.”

“It is! It is that easy. Go out, talk to people, don’t frown so much and maybe somebody will actually _want_ to spend time with you. Or, what, you’re too boring for that?”

Kageyama claps his jaw shut so hard his teeth crack together. For a moment, he doesn’t say a thing. And then he nods, and scoops his coat up from the bed.

“So you’re just gonna leave now?” Hinata calls, and when Kageyama doesn’t reply he storms out the bedroom door after him. “You know I’m right, so you just walk away? Is that how you do things, _Bakageyama?_ ”

Kageyama flinches at the nickname—it’s supposed to be friendly, but Hinata spits it like a real, honest insult. Half of him regrets it. The other half is too mad to care.

“I’m going to work,” Kageyama says, hand on the door handle. “Don’t bother coming tonight, wouldn’t want you to have to _babysit_ me.”

And then he opens the front door, and slams it behind him without another word.

Hinata breathes.

With Kageyama out of the room, his temper is cooling, and in its place regret seeps in.

It’s not...it’s not even like Kageyama _started_ it. All he did was grunt, all surly and frowny and regular old Kageyama when Hinata told him he was going to a party next weekend. That’s all—nothing out the ordinary—but Hinata, god what an _asshole_ , had to pick, and poke, and prod, and push Kageyama until he snapped.

What a _stupid_ thing to call him out on. Hinata _knows_ what Kageyama is like, knows how he is with people, with strangers. He knows how long it takes him to warm up, knows it’s got to take a special kind of someone to put in the effort to get past the frosty, unsure stage before Kageyama gets comfortable.

Hinata sits on the sofa and drops his head to his hands. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

_‘I have other friends, unlike **someone** —’ _

Hinata groans into his palms. Why, why is he such an _idiot_. It’s not like Kageyama is outwardly sensitive to the fact that, really, he _doesn’t_ have friends aside from Hinata. He never talks about it, never brings it up, but Hinata isn’t a total idiot. He sees the way Kageyama’s feet shuffle when they’re talking with Kenma, the way his fingers play on the hem of his shirt when Kuroo and Bokuto stop by, the way he hunches his shoulders and stands his whole bulk behind Hinata when Yachi stops over for coffee.

He knows Kageyama’s insecurities, now; knows how uncomfortable those simple, casual social interactions make him.

He knows this, and he _still—_

Hinata screams into a cushion. He screams and screams and screams, frustrated, angry with himself, and then he flops back and he waits.

He waits until nightfall, until the clock ticks over past eleven, when he would head to the rink to watch Kageyama skate. He hops up—his head spins and his stomach growls, and it occurs to Hinata that he hasn’t bothered eating since Kageyama left the flat—and slips on his shoes, grabbing his phone from the table before he heads out the door.

It’s raining.

Not even just a little rain - it’s pouring, torrential, and for a second Hinata teeters in the doorway and considers going back for his coat. As it stands he’s still in the clothes he slept in, the same t-shirt and sweats he wore the first time he followed Kageyama to the rink, and once more he is dressed completely inappropriately for his destination and, seemingly, his journey this time, too.

In the end, he leaves without changing. He runs the familiar path, treading in puddles that soak him right up to his shins and spill into his shoes, runs past the familiar cafes and bars and shops, runs and runs and runs until he reaches the car park and ducks under the awning above the main doors.

Hinata fiddles with his phone in his pocket. He’s cold, _freezing_ , soaked through his shirt and his sweats and there is a steady _drip drip drip_ against his shoulder where his hair is leaking excess rain water.

At the very least, it’s sheltered beneath the awning, but it doesn’t hold off the chill.

Hinata pulls out his phone, panting, and scrolls down to Kageyama’s number. The chances of him answering are slim, Hinata knows this; even if they weren’t fighting, Kageyama’s phone is usually in his bag in the stands, and he doubts Kageyama would hear it vibrating from all the way out on the rink.

He huffs and rubs at his arms.

This was...the stupidest idea, the worst thing he’s done since following Kageyama to the rink that very first time. He should just go _home_ , he thinks dismally. He should go home where it’s warm, and he should wait in the dark and the quiet for Kageyama to come back and then, _then_ they should talk. Then he should apologise.

Hinata tries the door. He isn’t sure what he’s expecting; perhaps that Kageyama, in his haste and his temper, had forgotten to lock it. Perhaps Hinata could let himself in, and it’d be just as cold in there but at least this journey would be worth it, and perhaps Hinata would find Kageyama out on the ice, listening to angsty music and dancing an angsty routine, and perhaps Hinata would run out on the ice in his shoes and hug him and tell him a thousand times over that he’s sorry, he’s sorry he’s sorry he’s _so sorry_.

And perhaps Kageyama would hug him back. He’d hug him, bleed some of his warmth into Hinata’s shaking frame and he’d say he was sorry, too, sorry for shouting and for leaving and for making him come out in the cold.

Perhaps he’d call him stupid even as he wrapped him up in his jacket. He’d call him a dumbass as they walked home, holding hands to keep his fingers warm, and he’d call him an idiot as he kissed him soft and slow in his bed with the blankets tucked right over their faces to keep the rest of the world out for just a little while.

But the door is locked. Hinata wriggles the handle but it doesn’t budge, and he stares down at his phone for a second longer before he jams it back in his pocket.

The rain doesn’t let up on the walk back.

In fact, it pours even harder. The sound it makes is thunderous, drumming the pavement and hammering the puddles. Hinata wraps his arms around his waist and walks with his head down, blinking the rain from his eyes and pushing himself through the sheets it sheds from the sky.

By the time he gets to their building he is drowning in his clothes. The weight of them has them sagging, the collar of his shirt sinking low on his chest and the hem of his sweats dragging over the ground. He fights to keep the waistband up as he gets to the door.

Hinata is reaching into his pockets when it hits him.

He doesn’t have his key.

As if the someone up there were openly laughing at him, the sky cackles with a booming wave of thunder and lightning zips overhead.

Hinata weighs up his options. They are, sadly, incredibly limited. He could a) walk back to the rink and wait, b) sit _here_ and wait, or c) ring Kageyama and hope he has it in him to answer.

Admittedly, if he weren’t so stupidly stubborn, he could phone a friend. Stay the night with someone else. He _could_ do that, it’d be easy, and he’d be nice and warm with a bed to sleep in within the hour.

He could, but then he won’t get to speak to Kageyama until _tomorrow_ , and that thought rattles hollow in him.

Thunder cracks again and Hinata picks up his phone.

Kageyama doesn’t answer on the first call, or the second, and Hinata is hopeful for the third when the ring-rings cut off early, but then his phone beeps and when he checks the screen, the call has ended rather than begun.

Kageyama hung up on him.

Hinata sighs, and jams his phone back in his pocket.

And then he settles, cold and wet and utterly, immeasurably miserable, on the saturated concrete to wait.

It’s hours before Kageyama comes home.

It’s still raining, though the weather has calmed some, and the light patter of drizzle masks Kageyama’s footsteps until the very last second.

Hinata looks up when Kageyama approaches. He’s jogging, hood held tight around his face, and Hinata tucks himself tighter in his ball and clenches his teeth to mask their chattering.

“Oi, stupid, what the hell are you doing?”

Hinata doesn’t say anything.

Kageyama crouches in front of him, balanced on the balls of his feet, and Hinata watches as Kageyama’s eyes skirt over his face, searching. There’s a frown there, creasing his brow, but he doesn’t look mad or frustrated or anything else, he just looks...concerned. Scared.

Hinata is _frozen_. He’s cold to the bone, barely feels it when Kageyama pokes at the bare skin of his arms, just trembles harder under the touch.

“Wha-why are you outside?”

Hinata’s jaw stutters, teeth clacking, and he shakes his head at Kageyama.

“Cold,” he rasps. It’s hard to _breathe_ , like stepping into a cold shower and Kageyama crowds a little closer into him. “F-f-forgot my ke-eys.”

“ _Stupid_ ,” Kageyama hisses. He fishes around in his jacket pocket until he pulls out his own set, and then he stands, extends a hand and helps Hinata clamber to his feet. “C’mon, in.”

Hinata can hardly feel his feet beneath him. He stumbles as he walks, tripping over his own frozen toes, and Kageyama hooks an arm around his waist to keep him propped upright as they clamber up the stairs. He grasps at Kageyama’s jacket. It’s slick from the rain and his fingers fumble over it, fat and weighty and Hinata thinks they’re an awful lot bigger than usual, harder to control.

“You’re such a—” Kageyama huffs, holding Hinata steady with one hand as he shakes the keys into the lock. “Such an _idiot_. What were you thinking?”

“Sorry,” Hinata mumbles. His tongue feels thick and fuzzy, too big to sit behind his teeth.

“Why didn’t you _go_ somewhere?”

“Sorry.”

“Why didn’t you _call_ someone?”

“‘M sorry.”

Kageyama shoves open the bathroom door and sits Hinata on the toilet seat.

  
“Stop _apologising_.” 

“Sorry.”

Kageyama grabs a couple of towels from the cupboard, dropping one atop Hinata’s head and wrapping the other around his shoulders. He rubs at his scalp roughly, scrapes the frigid water from his hair and Hinata shoves clumsily at the towel against his back. It feels too claustrophobic, trapped beneath the cloth on his head and the one at his shoulders.

“Stop,” Kageyama says, pulling the towel back into place. He tucks it around him, pulls the corners to meet at the front of his neck. “Hold it there.”

Hinata doesn’t, instead moving to push it off again. It’s too tight, too close. Kageyama drops the first damp towel to the floor with a little growl in the back of his throat and clamps the other one tighter still, rubbing at his spine and his arms.

“Don’t like it,” he slurs. Kageyama gives him an alarmed kind of look, then shakes his head.

“Tough. You need to warm up.”

Hinata...doesn’t really understand the fuss. He’s cold, but they’re inside now; he’ll be fine in a minute if Kageyama will just step back and give him a little room to breathe, to get his thoughts together.

“I’ll warm up in a minute.”

Kageyama grabs his jaw in two big, warm hands and keeps his face turned up. He looks a little chill-bitten, too, pink across his cheeks and nose and stark white everywhere else, paler than Hinata has ever seen him. Maybe he needs to warm up, too, Hinata thinks.

“You tired?” Kageyama asks, and he _is_ , god he’s so tired. When did he get so _exhausted?_ He nods his head.

“Can’t sleep yet,” he says, and Kageyama nods.

“Yeah, you can’t.”

Kageyama starts the shower and drags the head off the wall. Hinata watches him spray it over his own palm, adjust the temperature and repeat, again and again until he’s happy with it, then he hooks it back and turns, shoving the towel off of Hinata’s shoulders.

“Clothes off,” he says, and Hinata gives him a lazy smile.

“Later,” he says, “we gotta talk first.”

“I don’t mean—no, dumbass, clothes off and get in the shower.”

“I’m not dirty.”

Kageyama digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He grumbles, and Hinata cocks his head to one side.

“What’s wrong?” He asks. His voice sounds distant in his ears and the words stretch like gum, tacky and endless. Kageyama stares at him over his fingers.

“You,” he says, “you are what’s wrong. Get in the _shower.”_

“Sorry.”

“Stop!” Kageyama doesn’t yell. He doesn’t, but Hinata thinks he’s maybe trying to. Instead, it’s hoarse and strained, tight, and it makes Hinata’s heart hops a couple of quick beats between the slow, sluggish ones.

“Stop saying sorry. I get it, you’re sorry, but right now I don’t care. Tell me later, for now just _please_ , get your damn clothes _off_.”

Hinata tangles his fingers in the hem of his shirt. It’s plastered to his skin but, he thinks, it’s the only thing protecting him from the cold, and he is hesitant to remove it. Kageyama drags it up for him.

The moment it slaps to the tile, Hinata’s teeth start chattering again. Kageyama shucks his sweats down, boxers and socks and all, and kicks all the damp clothing to one side. Hinata sits, huddled and shaking and bare, on the toilet seat, and for a moment Kageyama just stares at him. And then he looks at the shower, and at Hinata, and at the shower once more before he switches it back off and drapes Hinata in a fresh warm towel.

“C’mon,” he says, “can you walk?”

Hinata thinks it’s a stupid question until he stands.

His feet feel like clubs on the ends of his legs. They just...they don’t move, and they don’t feel the tile beneath them, and Kageyama walks him slow and steady through to their bedroom where he sits him down on his bed.

“Wait,” he says, like Hinata is in any state to _move_.

Hinata blinks sluggishly. When he opens his eyes again, Kageyama is naked, too, and he is tugging back Hinata’s bed clothes and rearranging the cushions around the edge of the bed. Hinata stares at him, shivering in his towel.

“Here,” Kageyama says, pulling Hinata to his feet once more.

There’s only five feet of floor between Kageyama’s bed and his own, but it’s the longest five feet Hinata has ever crossed.

Beneath the covers, he is finally warm. Warmer still when Kageyama slides beneath them, too, pressing every inch of hot skin down the length of Hinata’s whole body. He pulls the covers all the way up, up over the top of their heads until they are buried in a cotton canopy, shrouded from the world. Hinata tucks his forehead up against Kageyama’s and breathes in the air he lets out.

Kageyama worms his arms around him. One settles over his waist, palm pressing light at the top of his back and the other slips beneath his neck and curls, fingers teasing over his still-damp hair.

Something distant swims up through the fog in Hinata’s brain. It is a memory, wavy and distorted, and as it settles Hinata watches; he and Kageyama, once again buried beneath the bed clothes, but this time Kageyama is kissing him languidly, and Hinata is hotter than hot beneath him. It shimmers around the edges like a dream, and it is then that Hinata remembers that is what it was: a wish, a daydream.

“Call me a dumbass,” he says, softly, and Kageyama’s forehead rolls against his.

“That’s a kink I’ve never heard of.”

In the quiet beneath the bedclothes, Hinata laughs. He laughs, cracking the peace, breaking the tranquility to nothing. He laughs, and he laughs, and then his eyes start leaking and he presses his face so close to Kageyama’s it _hurts_.

“I’m sorry.” His voice comes broken, shards of what it’s supposed to be. The hand smoothed to the top of his back presses harder, pushes them chest to chest. Hinata can feel the frantic beat of Kageyama’s heart echoing his own.

He doesn’t speak, but he does kiss him. It’s kind of like he’d imagined, if a little more watery, and it thaws what is left of the chill in him and eases some of the knot in his stomach.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Kageyama says. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not—”

“—It’s _fine_.” Kageyama’s fingers fist into Hinata’s hair. “It’s really fine. Just go to sleep.”

Hinata nudges one of his legs between Kageyama’s and wraps his arms around him, too. He ducks his head, tucks himself beneath Kageyama’s chin. There are a lot more tears to come, he knows, because he is tired and the night has been long, and cold, and Kageyama is home and, most importantly, he’s not mad or upset anymore.

Kageyama presses his lips to the top of Hinata’s head and runs long, slow lines up and down his spine with the tips of his fingers.

Hinata almost forgets they’re naked. It’s the first time they’ve been bare together without sex, and it swells something warm and full in his chest when he thinks about that. Kageyama is content to just...just lie with him, to sleep, and Hinata knows that maybe things will be different when they wake up—maybe Kageyama will be touching him already, rousing him with luring lips and coaxing hands, or maybe he will wait until Hinata blinks blearily at him to roll his hips against him—but for now, just this, as it is, is _perfect._


	2. Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the weeks that follow, Hinata spends almost every waking second that they are together making things up to him. Kageyama, for his part, doesn’t seem all that mad anymore, but Hinata can’t really stop thinking about the look on his face—all pinched and hurt, which is definitely, absolutely worse than angry—and Hinata doesn’t think a day will ever come when he stops feeling bad about it.
> 
> And so today, he cooks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah thank you to everyone who read and commented/liked/bookmarked the last chapter. I hope you all enjoy chapter 2 just as much!!
> 
> Warning: things get a little ridiculous, and Kageyama gets Filthy

In the weeks that follow, Hinata spends almost every waking second that they are together making things up to him. Kageyama, for his part, doesn’t seem all that mad anymore, but Hinata can’t really stop thinking about the look on his face—all pinched and _hurt_ , which is definitely, absolutely worse than angry—and Hinata doesn’t think a day will ever come when he stops feeling bad about it.

And so today, he cooks.

He’s never been all that good at it—lives predominantly off of cup noodles and snack food, honestly—but, he figures, it’s the thought that counts, and not the three burned pans and the sad, smoking remains of the pork cutlets Hinata spent the last of his weekly allowance buying.

The rice, at least, is coming along nicely.

He tosses the saucepan in the sink and switches on the tap. It hisses, billowing a noxious mix of smoke and dirty steam and Hinata coughs around it, wafts it away from the fire alarm with a pair of lightly charred oven gloves, and it is as the traitorous little machine gives the first few long, wailing beeps that the flat door opens and Kageyama’s feet echo across the floor.

“Don’t come in yet!” Hinata yells. He jumps, stretching, but the tiny little _off_ switch evades the tips of his flexed fingers and the machine drones on.

“I’m already in,” Kageyama says, “what the hell happened?”

“I cooked.”

Kageyama nudges Hinata out of the way and lifts an arm, tapping the switch, and Hinata huffs his hair out of his face and frowns up at him.

“Cooked.”

Kageyama’s gaze drifts from the oven top where the pork cutlets sit, to the bench, strewn with empty wrappers and used dishes and _unused_ dishes, to the sink, where the saucepan smokes innocent and idle.

Hinata throws the oven gloves onto the counter and groans. Kageyama purses his lips, nudging the pan handle with his knuckle.

“I tried,” Hinata says, slumping over the counter to rest his head on his folded arms. “I tried, but I suck at cooking.”

“I can see that.”

Hinata peeks up at him through his hair. He looks an odd cross between disgusted and amused, nose all wrinkled and brow all furrowed but the corners of his mouth are tight, pinched up against his cheeks.

“I was trying to make a nice dinner,” he says, “for both of us. As an apology.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes.

“I don’t need more apologies, dumbass. I told you, it’s fine.”

It is very much _not_ fine. Hinata doesn’t really know how to express just how not fine it is - he was an asshole, a huge one, the _biggest_ one on the face of the planet, probably, and it doesn’t matter that Kageyama brushes him off time and time and time again. He still feels bad, and he will continue to do so for the rest of forever.

The rice cooker beeps. Hinata gives it a feeble wave and flashes a sheepish grin.

“Rice is done.”

In the end, Kageyama eats the rice on it’s own. Hinata doesn’t really understand how he can eat something so _boring_ , but even the thought of the word turns his stomach a little sour and for once, he doesn’t say it out loud.

“That was nice,” he says once he’s done, adding his bowl to the pile of dishes in the sink. Hinata swings a foot out to kick him as he walks past.

“It was _rice_ ,” Hinata says. “It’s _b_ —bland.”

If Kageyama notices his slip, he doesn’t mention it. Instead he continues on through to their bedroom and only when he reaches the door does he stop, looking back over his shoulder.

“If you really want to make it up to me, get your ass in here.”

A tiny little thrill zips up Hinata’s spine, sets his back ramrod straight. He wolfs down the rest of his own rice (and egg, for a little flavour) and follows Kageyama to the bedroom.

Kageyama is in no hurry to do anything. Hinata sits on the bed with his hands between his thighs, bouncing his legs as he watches Kageyama drop his bag, check his phone, change out of his day clothes to his lazy ones.

Kageyama doesn’t look at him, but his eyes do flit back and forth between his bag and the wardrobe, his phone and the wardrobe, his clothes and the wardrobe, and with every swing of his gaze a little frown digs itself deeper between his brows.

It’s always the wardrobe. Hinata has noticed it before when they’ve been lounging, watching a movie or reading magazines or playing games or even just talking, lying in the glow from Hinata’s bedside lamp in the dead of night; Kageyama always glares at the wardrobe.

There are plenty of other more offensive objects in the bedroom to frown at, Hinata thinks. The curtains, for one, are _awful_ , floral and patchy and useless at blocking out the daylight, and he’s not all that fond of the carpet, either. Even the walls, big and white and bare on Kageyama’s side of the room, are an awful lot more upsetting to the eye than that wardrobe.

“We can just...get a new one, if you want.”

Kageyama starts, looking over like he’d forgotten Hinata was there.

“The wardrobe,” he says, “I think we could get a new one if we asked, if you hate it _that_ much.”

“I don’t hate—” Kageyama starts. “It’s not the _wardrobe_ , stupid. I’m just thinking.”

There can’t be that much to think about with a wardrobe, Hinata thinks, but it’s all Kageyama ever seems to do when he looks at it. Frown, and think.

“Thinking about what?”

Kageyama scoots back on his bed, propped on his pillows, and chews on the inside of his lip.

“Can we try something different?”

“Like, different-different or sex different?”

“Sex-different.”

Hinata flushes a little at the ease with which the words roll off his tongue. There is no fumbling, never really is with Kageyama, at least, not where sex is concerned. Hinata wiggles his toes and nods his head.

Hinata has had an awful lot of firsts with Kageyama; most of the sex-ones, fingering and blowjobs and _sex_ -sex, full sex, dick-in-the-butt sex—both giving _and_ receiving—and so he’s not all that concerned about trying out another one tonight. That and, honest truth, he’d do just about anything Kageyama asked of him if it’d help him feel just a little less guilty.

Kageyama stretches up off his bed and steps to the wardrobe. He glares a little harder at it, then, grabbing the handle, he pulls it open and crouches in front of it.

“You’re sure?” He calls, rifling beneath piles of unhung clothes. “You haven’t even asked what it is, stupid.”

“Yeah,” Hinata says. “I’m sure. I trust you.”

Kageyama looks up at that, hands still where they’re buried in a mound of jumpers. He glances over his shoulder with the same kind of wide-eyed look he gets when Hinata catches him staring. It’s cute, definitely cute, and Hinata tells him so with a smile.

“Shut up.”

Kageyama’s cheeks are burning red even as he turns away to continue looking for - well, whatever it is he’s supposed to be finding.

_This_ , Hinata doesn’t understand at all. How can Kageyama be so _irritatingly_ confident with his dick out, or with anything pertaining to having his dick out, and in the same breath be shy to a simple, off-hand compliment?

He snorts out a sigh and flops back on the mattress. There’s a tingle of interest in his gut as he listens to Kageyama searching and his hips do a weird little roll of their own accord, sinking low against his duvet. Kageyama’s hands fall quiet, a tiny, triumphant, “Aha,” falling from his lips.

Hinata pokes his head up.

Kageyama is standing, a shoe-box clasped in both hands. Hinata stares at it and frowns.

“Is this gonna be a foot thing? Because I trust you, but I’m super not into feet.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama gripes, striding back to his bed and sitting with the box in his lap. “It’s not a foot thing.”

“Good.”

Kageyama gives him a pinched, sideways kind of look, and taps the top of the box with two long fingers.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, and Hinata nods his head. “For ages, about...about this stuff.” He taps the box again. There’s a weird level of hesitancy in his tone that Hinata doesn’t like; this is sex stuff, and Kageyama is supposed to be confident with sex stuff.

“What is it?” Hinata asks. He smiles, a little falsely, for Kageyama’s benefit, but a lot of it is honest eager curiosity, and Kageyama’s brows lift a little from their frown.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t, but his hands slid around the edges of the box to lift up the lid, placing it on the mattress beside him and tipping the box so that Hinata can see inside it.

He swallows.

_Toys_.

The box is full of toys. Some, like the big pink dick-shaped one, have a very obvious purpose, but there are others that Hinata can’t even _begin_ to place. He’s not totally naive to it, has seen sex toys in videos and magazines, but they don’t often go past the dildos and the fleshlights and there are things in Kageyama’s box that Hinata, honestly, doesn’t think he’d want near any sensitive part of his body.

“Oh.”

Kageyama’s eyes burn into his skin but Hinata refuses to meet them. He’s still...still processing, really, that Kageyama has been keeping a stash of what he can only assume are weapons of _torture_ in their wardrobe for the last six months. And he’s been thinking about doing this, about whipping them out (whipping!! There is a big long length of _something_ curled up in the bottom of the box beneath a black leather something-else) for, if Hinata is assuming correctly, at least the last two.

And all that time he’s spent staring at the wardrobe…

Hinata swallows and stands up, takes a few cautious steps and leans a little closer.

“There’s a lot of stuff,” Kageyama says, and Hinata gives a little _no kidding_ kind of snort, shifting a few items with the tip of his finger to get a better look. “And I don’t really use a lot of it. Most of it is just stuff I tried once and never got rid of, or,” he lifts the black leather something-else and tangles it from the tip of his finger. “Stuff I was given.”

Hinata chokes. The _thing_ , swinging like a pendulum from Kageyama’s hand, is a collar. It twists benignly, light glinting from a row of silver studs decorating the edges.

“Stuff,” he says, chokes again, clears his throat. “Stuff you were given. By who?”

It’s weird, the tight, unsettled feeling in his gut at the idea of somebody buying Kageyama sex toys. Which is _stupid_ for a number of reasons; one, what Kageyama has done before they met is really none of his business at all; and two, what Kageyama is doing _now_ is really none of his business because they’re never...never said they were _exclusive_ , or anything.

They’re just friends. Roommates. Pals who, perhaps more frequently than Hinata would expect of friends, sleep with each other.

Kageyama shrugs his shoulder.

“The guy I used to see,” he says. Hinata’s stomach tightens a little more. He doesn’t, _doesn’t_ like the thought of that at all, and he burns green with the guilt of it. It’s not his place to feel jealous.

Kageyama drops the collar back into the box.

“You used them? With him, I mean.” Hinata says. Kageyama shrugs a shoulder.

“Most of them,” he says. And then he scowls. “I keep them _clean_ , if that’s what you’re pulling faces for.”

Hinata hadn’t even realised he _was_ pulling faces, but now that Kageyama says it he can feel the pinch of muscles, the tension aching his brows and his cheeks. He settles himself, and then he laughs, high and tight and forced.

“Good,” he says. It’s easier to agree than explain what it was that was really bothering him. “Which ones did—did you two use?”

Kageyama points to a few things here and there and Hinata’s gut grows harder, colder with every jab of Kageyama’s finger.

“There were more, too,” he says, “but a lot of them were his, or stuff we bought that he kept.”

It sounds so _domestic_ , the idea that Kageyama and his ex—because that’s what he is, and the thought sits horribly on Hinata’s stomach—bought _toys_ together. Hinata’s blood pumps hard in his ears. He wants to buy sex toys with Kageyama, toys that haven’t been used by somebody _else_ , toys that are just his and Kageyama’s to play with.

“Anyway.” Kageyama’s voice cracks him out of his head and Hinata blinks, shakes the weird thoughts out his ears. “I thought we could use some. For something different.”

Hinata eyes the box. On the one hand, the idea of using sex toys with Kageyama is _thrilling_. It’s something he’s always wanted to try, always looks good in the videos, but he’s never had the courage to buy or try them and here he is, presented with the perfect opportunity, with _Kageyama_ , and…

And he half wants to turn it down.

Ridiculous.

“Are you sure all of this is for sex?” Hinata picks out a strange, thin toy, only a couple of inches long at best with a hoop on one end. It bends in his hand, rubbery, far more flexible than he’d have thought and Hinata twangs it between his fingers. “I mean, what does this do?”

“It goes in your dick.”

Hinata drops it back into the box.

“It’s a penis plug,” Kageyama says, lifting it back out. Hinata eyes it warily. “Like a butt plug, but like...for your dick.”

Hinata shakes his head. That _can’t_ be right, it can’t be, because stuff is absolutely one hundred per cent _not_ supposed to go in your dick and Hinata might have slept through a few biology classes here or there, but he is almost certain of this fact.

“No,” he says, “you’re using it wrong.”

“I’m really not.”

“You are, you have to be.” Hinata points at the toy. It looks thicker, now that he knows what it’s for, foreboding. “You can’t have put that—no way.”

“I’ve only used it once,” he says, and then he frowns down at it. “It’s...not all that great.”

“Because you’re using it wrong! Who even told you that’s what you do with it?”

“Oikawa,” he says, simply. Hinata stores the name to the back of his brain.

“Well, he told you wrong. Super wrong. Don’t listen to anything he has ever told you ever, in your life.”

Kageyama raises his brows.

“He told me everything. Literally everything.”

Hinata blinks at him, and Kageyama goes on, dropping the toy in with the rest.

“Everything we’ve done,” he says, “all the sex stuff, that was Oikawa. Don’t look so surprised, dumbass! Where’d you think I learned it?”

Hinata doesn’t honestly know. He has wondered, wondered an awful lot, in fact, about Kageyama’s sexual history because there is no way somebody so _awkward_ , so uncomfortable with literally everything else in the world (except skating, maybe, but even then, he doesn’t like being watched) can just...miraculously be cool with getting naked and bumping his gross parts with somebody else’s gross parts.

Yes, he has wondered, but he’s never really...really _thought_ about it. Hinata doesn’t think he likes knowing that somebody showed Kageyama how to be the way he is; he much prefers assuming it is just an enigma, a weird part of his personality that he was definitely born with, did not learn from an outside source.

Better yet, he sort of likes thinking that Kageyama is only this way for _him_. Which is stupid, it is, because he knows—has been told—that Kageyama has been with other people, he’s heard it right out of Kageyama’s _mouth_ , but tonight, the knowledge sits heavy and bitter in him.

“He taught you,” Hinata starts, “how to do sex stuff well?”

Kageyama nods.

“He taught me how to appreciate it, I guess,” he says. He squirms, looking uncomfortable, and Hinata drops to sit next to him on the bed, resolutely ignoring the contents of the box in his lap. “I was really nervous before that.”

“You’re still nervous _now_ ,” Hinata says. “Like...all the time, Kageyama. You’re always nervous.”

Kageyama whips up a hand and smacks him upside the head. It doesn’t hurt, just catches, ruffles his hair but he whines all the same and rubs over his scalp.

“I mean,” he huffs, “I was nervous with sex, too. Oikawa taught me how to appreciate myself.”

Hinata eyes the box, and then looks up at the side of Kageyama’s face.

“How to appreciate yourself...by putting stuff in your dick.”

Kageyama rubs a hand down his face.

“He was into a lot of weird shit,” he concedes. “But the point _is_ , he showed me how to like...be not nervous, at least with sex. Gave me a little bit of confidence.”

Hinata chews this over in his head. He doesn’t particularly _like_ it, that somebody managed to literally fuck the nervous right out of him, but, Hinata thinks, if this _Oikawa_ can pull the big, anxious stick out of Kageyama’s ass one toy at a time, maybe Hinata can wrestle a little of that every day anxiety out of him, too.

“That’s not important anyways,” Kageyama says. He turns his torso until Hinata sits in the shadow of him, big and looming. “Can we use these?”

Hinata looks down at the box. Kageyama is so close, so warm, and his fingers sit hopeful against the edge of the box, and Hinata still owes him so many apologies for being the biggest asshole on the _planet_ , probably, and…

He reaches into the box. His fingers close around something small and curved and he lifts it out, holds it for Kageyama to take.

“What does this one do?”

Kageyama reaches out to take it. As he does, the tips of his fingers brush over Hinata’s arm, tickle up the skin of his wrist and tease at his palm. Hinata’s breath sits tight and still as Kageyama closes his hand around the toy, against Hinata’s fingers, and he shudders out a sigh when Kageyama leans in close enough for his breath to ghost over Hinata’s mouth.

“Let me show you?”

##

What it _does_ is turn Hinata’s whole world upside down.

The little curved beauty, as it turns out, is a prostate massager. Kageyama took great pleasure in preparing him to take it, all long, slow strokes of his fingers—only two, the toy is only small—and words whispered in his ear, lobe caught between his teeth. He took great pleasure in inserting the toy, too, arranging it to sit against all the right places and he took great pleasure switching it on, watching the way Hinata jumped as the low humming vibrations worked him.

He is taking great pleasure now, lying beside Hinata, head propped up on his hand as he watches him squirm over the sheets.

He isn’t touching himself, but Hinata sort of wishes he would. He always likes watching Kageyama stroke himself, and it’d be even _better_ right now, knowing he was doing it for him. For the sight of him.

“Is that good?” Kageyama asks. His voice comes out brutally low, rumbling from somewhere deep in his throat and Hinata groans, rocks his hips slow and steady with the pulse of the toy inside him.

“Yeah,” he breathes, groaning out a breathy little whine and grinding back onto the toy. It buzzes away, steady, and Hinata’s curls a leg to prop his foot on the mattress. It’s good, _amazing_ , but _god_ does it tease. It stops just short of enough; he needs it thicker, fuller, _deeper_ and he needs to feel it move in him, fuck into him until he is boneless and he groans at the thought, strains his leg and lifts his hips off the mattress.

Kageyama’s hand reaches out to steady him. It presses low on his stomach, pushing him back down onto the bed and Hinata moans, shuddering out his breaths as the toy works him.

“Kag’yama,” he breathes, keening, and Kageyama gives a soft, near silent groan. “‘Yama, please.”

Kageyama’s hand rubs up and down his stomach. It’s big, broad, and flattened over him, fingers splayed and spanning the space between his hips. Sometimes, in the moments when they’re not in bed, not on the ice, Hinata forgets just how _big_ Kageyama is compared to him. He always looks too big for the space he occupies when he stands in his nervousness, shoulders hunched and back bowed, but Hinata feels bigger with his confidence, his assuredness, and it is only in moments like this that he remembers just how much smaller he is.

“You gonna come?” He asks. Hinata doesn’t know. He thinks he could, definitely, because the toy inside him feels _incredible_ , but he thinks it’d take an awful lot longer than he’s willing to wait.

“Need more,” he rasps, and Kageyama reaches down between his legs, fiddles with the settings, turns it up until the vibrations _whine_.

“Like that?”

No, Hinata thinks, even if it does feel amazing. It’s not the kind of more he needs. Hinata bites at his lip, eyes rolling as the toy pulses faster and his cock jumps, weeping a thick line against his stomach. Kageyama watches with hooded eyes, presses the bottom of the toy so it sits harder against him.

He shakes his head.

“More,” he says again. Kageyama raises a brow, presses the toy a little deeper. Hinata’s hips twitch.

“You want something different?”

Hinata nods. He isn’t sure _what_ he wants, so long as it’s bigger, warmer, reaches deeper than the massager. He can barely think for the feel of it milking him.

“Sure?” Kageyama asks. Hinata can feel his fingers hovering over the switch. He nods, squeezing his eyes and dropping his jaw as Kageyama wobbles his hand against the base of the toy with quick, sharp jolts of his arm and Hinata cries out, back bowing as it bounces in him.

_That_ is better, a little more like it. Hinata pants, clawing at the bed sheets to keep himself grounded as Kageyama grinds the massager against him, and it’s coming, he can feel it, the heat blooming tight in his stomach, and then it all stops. The toy stops moving, stops vibrating, and Kageyama slips it from him with a wet squelching noise and tosses it to one side.

“Jesus,” Hinata breathes, wiping a hand over his brow. “That thing is...intense.”

Kageyama nods. He’s sitting up, fishing through the pile of loose toys waiting to be tested.

“It’s good,” he says. “One of the first ones we tried.”

Hinata’s stomach drops. _Oikawa_ , he thinks sourly, unfurling himself to lie flat on the mattress. It doesn’t settle well, the thought of Kageyama and Oikawa using this very same toy, with each other, in the early days when Kageyama was probably more bashful. Hinata can imagine him covering himself in the low light as Oikawa preps him, slides the toy in. He can imagine the way Kageyama would flush, head to toe, and he’d shake with his nerves as Oikawa played him with the massager.

An angry little part of him hates that he didn’t get to see that.

Kageyama stretches back next to him with another toy in hand. This one is bigger, a lot bigger, and Hinata knows exactly where it’s going. His hole twitches at the thought.

“This,” Kageyama says, reaching into the draw for the steriliser, “is my favourite.”

“Did _he_ use that one on you too?”

For the smallest of moments, Kageyama gives him a strange look. It passes quickly, a frown that tucks his eyes and pulls his lips, and Hinata wonders if he was a little too obvious in his distaste for Kageyama’s previous partner.

“No,” he says, “no, this one is mine. Nobody else has used it.”

_That_ , Hinata likes. He hums with something like pride at being the first to use this oh-so-special toy and he watches eagerly as Kageyama wipes it over and lubes it up. The toy isn’t much smaller than Kageyama’s own cock but it is an awful lot colder, smooth metal dragging a long, wet line down Hinata’s stomach.

“On your knees,” Kageyama says, and Hinata obliges. He scrambles up and stretches out on all fours, chest low to his pillows and legs a little spread. Kageyama drags the toy over the bottom of his back, pushes it to spread his cheeks.

“Just your knees.”

A big, warm hand wraps across Hinata’s shoulder to splay over his chest and Kageyama pulls, tugs his torso up until he is kneeling, back to Kageyama’s broad chest. One of Kageyama’s arms is wedged between them, slicking him up with each rub of the vibrator between his cheeks, and the other is clamped over Hinata’s chest, fingers tucked high to sit close to his throat, pressing over his collar. Hinata sucks in a big breath, arcs his back to press against the toy.

It stretches him as it goes in. Hinata moans, jerks just a little and Kageyama slows his press, gives the vibrator a few lazy pumps before it sinks a little deeper.

“Shit,” Hinata breathes, choking on dry air, and Kageyama’s face presses in close to his cheek, breath hot over his skin. He twists the dial on the bottom, and a low hum flares to life. Hinata bucks, stuttering out a groan.

“Better?”

Hinata moans his yes _loud_ , rocking back into every thrust of the vibrator as Kageyama fucks him with slow little flicks of his wrist. This is, amazingly, better than the massager, but Hinata isn’t sure if that’s solely because of the size or the shape or the steady thrust of the toy, or whether it’s because he knows that this is _Kageyama’s_ , his own personal favourite, unused by anyone but himself.

Hinata groans just thinking about it. Kageyama fucks him a little harder, a little deeper and Hinata breathes out a long, jerky whine as his body trembles with the press of the toy against his prostate.

“You look so good,” Kageyama breathes against his cheek. The hand at his throat spreads a little higher, curls against his neck. “Sound so good. If you could see yourself now, Shouyou.”

Kageyama punctuates his name with one hard press of the toy and Hinata cries out, thighs shuddering to keep him upright as Kageyama plays him with the vibrator.

“I wanna see you like this on my cock,” he says. Hinata can feel the heat of his mouth against his cheek, all dry, cracked skin and a wicked, flickering tongue and he turns his head, stretching to catch Kageyama’s lips against his own. Kageyama gives a little _oomph_ of surprise but he recovers quickly enough, keeps up the flick of his wrist and kisses him back.

“Want you,” Hinata mumbles, right against Kageyama’s mouth. He says it before he even has a chance to think about it, but really, it’s true. He definitely wants Kageyama, wants him buried inside of him right now. Screw the massager, screw the vibrator, screw every tainted toy strewn about the bed; he wants Kageyama. Just Kageyama.

Kageyama doesn’t need telling twice. He gives a few more thrusts of the vibrator and Hinata groans, drops his chin to his chest as it pulses against him, and then Kageyama is pulling it out, pulling himself away, reaching for the drawer to rifle for a condom.

“Don’t need one,” Hinata says, panting.

“You sure?” Kageyama asks, and Hinata nods. They’re always clean, always careful, and never before has Hinata even had the _urge_ to turn down a little extra protection but right now, all he wants is to feel Kageyama, feel every last inch of him against him with no barrier between them.

“Please, Tobio, c’mon.” Hinata can hear the desperation in his tone, knows how needy he must sound but Kageyama just groans, long and low and presses right up behind Hinata. Kageyama is hot, _burning_ against his back and his heart is hammering, beating frantic at his rib cage as he rubs his cock between Hinata’s thighs.

“Ready?” He asks, and Hinata nods. Kageyama’s arm comes back up to cage his chest and Hinata grabs at it, digging his nails into the skin. He can feel Kageyama’s other hand press between them and half of him hates it, because it makes a little gap for the cool air to seep in and it’s too much _space_ between them, but then the head of Kageyama’s cock is pressed against his hole, is easing into him and they give one long, mutual groan as he sinks his way in.

_This_ is what he needed. It’s what he needed since the tease of the massager, what he wanted with the press of the vibrator. Kageyama, hot and hard and filling him, stretching him out. Kageyama grunts with the final push, and he withdraws his hand, closing what little space was left between his front and Hinata’s back.

Hinata wants to tell him that this is it—this is _perfect_ —but he can’t, because his breath is stuck behind a tall, tall wall, barricaded deep in his chest and he can’t squeeze enough of it out to form words. Kageyama draws out slow, pushes back in and the walls of his lungs press tighter, ring him dry until he is wheezing and Kageyama’s hand sits light over his throat.

“Breathe, idiot,” he says, and Hinata does. He sucks in air and drinks it down like water. Kageyama gives another lazy thrust and Hinata hiccups, head lolling back to rest on his shoulder. He wants to retort, and there’s a, “don’t call me an idiot during sex!” waiting on his tongue, but it won’t come out. It sits behind the wall with all of his air and he can’t coax it out.

“That’s it.” Kageyama’s voice is soft, encouraging, and Hinata takes another shaky breath in, shudders it back out. His eyes are watering, leaking tracks down his cheeks. He isn’t even sure why it is that he’s crying, why he can’t breathe, why every rock of Kageyama’s hips knocks the wind out of him but he is, and he can’t, and it _does_.

He twists his head and searches for Kageyama’s mouth again, and this time, when he finds him, he kisses him slow.

This is his _favourite_ kind of kiss with Kageyama. Sure, he likes when it’s rushed, when it’s desperate, all sucking lips and biting teeth but nothing beats _this_. It’s hot and wet and lazy, the kind of kiss that could go on for _hours_ and Hinata sort of wishes it would, but Kageyama cuts it off too short—any cut off is too short right now, Hinata thinks—and buries himself inside him.

“You always take me so well,” Kageyama says. Hinata grips Kageyama’s arm a little tighter. “Stretch so well for me.”

“To—Tobio.”

Kageyama uses his knees to knock Hinata’s thighs a little further apart. He spreads them and they tremble beneath his weight. Kageyama’s spare hand glides from his hip, ghosts down over his groin, his thighs, and reaches between his legs, presses where they are joined. Kageyama teases over the edges of his hole, smoothing against the taut muscle as he fucks into him.

“You think you could take more?” He asks.

“I don’t— _ah_ —I don’t know.”

“I think you could,” Kageyama says. He slides out, lines one finger up alongside his cock and pushes back in, and Hinata feels the little extra stretch as he takes Kageyama’s cock and his finger at the same time.

Hinata’s head bounces against Kageyama’s shoulder with every thrust. If it weren’t for the arm around his chest, Hinata doesn’t think he’d be able to stay upright. He’s too shaky, too wobbly, too boneless to hold his own weight and as Kageyama pushes in another finger Hinata groans and sags.

“God, you could take so much more,” Kageyama breathes. Hinata can hear the coil in him winding tighter; he can tell by the strain in his voice as he works him, wrist brushing over Hinata’s bouncing cock as he works his shaft and his fingers inside him.

“Tobio,” he breathes, curls his fingers over Kageyama’s forearm. “Tobio, _nng_ , ah—please.”

“Please what?” he asks. “More? You could take it. Take a whole other cock in you if we stretched you right.”

Hinata presses his hips back onto Kageyama’s every thrust. It shouldn’t be hot at all, the thought of it; of stretching his hole wide with two dicks, but _Kageyama_ is saying it, moaning it, jerking his hips to it and Hinata is starting to think it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.

“Can’t—couldn’t,” he groans. Kageyama pumps into him faster.

“Fuck, you could,” he says. His lips play over Hinata’s cheek and the hand at his throat reaches up, tucks under his jaw and tips his head all the way back. Hinata drops his mouth open, panting. “If I can, you could.”

The thought catches him off guard. Kageyama with two cocks filling him; was one of them Oikawa? Who was the other?

“You’d feel _incredible_ , you know? So tight, Shouyou.”

Kageyama would feel so good, too, stretched around _his_ cock. Hinata twitches at the thought.

“Fuck, maybe we should—” Kageyama stops, gives a few sporadic thrusts and Hinata’s cock leaks a long thread against the bedsheets. “—should try that. Get someone else to stuff you with me.”

“No.”

Hinata chokes it out. He’s not...not opposed to the idea, not totally. It gets him hot just thinking about it, stokes the fire burning in his gut, but _no_ , no, he doesn’t want somebody else.

“No,” he says again, and Kageyama’s thrusts slow. “Jus—just you.”

Kageyama twists Hinata’s face by the jaw and kissing him again. This one is a little more biting, more urgent, but there is still a sweetness to it that swells Hinata’s heart in his chest. He doesn’t want to kiss anyone else, to have anyone else inside of him. Kageyama’s hips pick up their frantic pace and he pulls his fingers out, bracing his hand on Hinata’s hip for leverage as he hammers home, gliding over Hinata’s prostate with every thrust.

“ _A-ah—ng—_ just, _ha_ , just you.” Hinata can feel the words rolling off his tongue again and again and _again_ , hissed into Kageyama’s open mouth as he kisses him. He slides his grip from Kageyama’s forearm up to his wrist, to the fingers curling against his jaw and there he stays, holding at the back of Kageyama’s hand to steady himself as he comes, spilling ropes over the bedsheets.

Kageyama comes in him with a groan and a few stuttering, uneven jerks of his hips. Hinata can feel it fill him, hot and pulsing and he pushes deep to finish, hips flush to Hinata’s.

“Fuck,” he breathes after a minute. They haven’t parted, but Hinata isn’t sure how much longer he can stay upright. His legs feel like jelly beneath him, thighs wobbling, and at his back Kageyama is shaking, too, panting air across his cheek.

Hinata feels distressingly empty when Kageyama pulls out of him. It’s always a little weird, after being filled so thoroughly, but today the absence of him aches a little.

He flops down onto his pillows as Kageyama cleans up around them. He should get up, he knows he should; he needs to clean himself up, too, but he is warm, satiated, too sleepy to think about showering.

“Oi,” Kageyama says, nudging his shoulder. Hinata must have drifted off, even just a little, because the room is cleared of toys and Kageyama is dressed in his sweats and a t-shirt, and his hair is dripping a steady patch of damp against his shoulder. “You need to clean up, dumbass.”

Hinata hugs his pillow against his chest and shakes his head.

“‘M tired,” he says. Kageyama rolls his eyes and nudges him again.

“Me too,” he says. “But you’re gonna feel gross in the morning if you don’t get clean first.”

“ _You_ do it,” he says, yawning. Kageyama’s eyes roll again and Hinata closes his own, and it is only moments before the swell of sleep breaks over him.

When he wakes in the morning, he is still naked.

He is, but he is tucked beneath his blankets instead of on top of them, warm and cosy, and where he'd expected wetness, stickiness decorating the backs of his thighs and between his legs, there is only smooth, dry skin. 

* * *

Hinata thinks long and hard about ways to help Kageyama with his little confidence problem. It’s been niggling at him for days, every time Oikawa’s name pops into his head. If _he_ can do something to help Kageyama, so can Hinata. 

And so he makes lists upon lists, ponders ideas long into the night—some an awful lot more ridiculous than others—and, in the end, he comes to the conclusion that the best way to build confidence is, much like swimming, to throw him in at the deep end.

It’s maybe not...not the best technique, because honestly Kageyama seems much more comfortable with the idea of staying in the flat and seeing him again later in the evening, but, stubborn as ever, Hinata drags him by the hand all the way to the coffee shop where Yachi, Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima are waiting for them.

“You’ve met them before,” he says. Kageyama trails behind him, dragging his steps and hunching his shoulders, and he grunts his acknowledgement as they round the corner. “Don’t look so _concerned_.”

“I’m not concerned,” he says, but Hinata knows it isn’t true. He can see it in the curve of him, the way the rod of his back bends and bows and drags his frame in on itself; Kageyama usually stands straight when they walk together, taller than tall, and Hinata slows as they approach the coffee shop to look at him.

“My friends are fine,” he says, “they like you. Or, well, Yachi and Yamaguchi like you. Tsukishima doesn’t like anybody, so don’t worry about him.”

There’s a rap on the glass beside them and they jump, Kageyama with his shoulders and Hinata with his whole being, inches off the ground. In the window, a grumpy face framed in blonde hair and sectioned by thick-rimmed glasses squints out at them. Hinata sticks his tongue out at Tsukishima, who pushes his glasses up his nose and taps at his watch.

_Yes, we’re late_ , _I know_ , Hinata thinks. He rolls his eyes and pulls Kageyama to the door.

“It’s just coffee,” he says, “we’re gonna talk about classes and our other friends and the people we don’t like, and then we’ll go home again. That’s all, okay?”

“I don’t like it,” Kageyama says immediately. Hinata frowns at him and pushes the door, nudges him in first.

“It’s exactly what you and me do, just with more people.”

Kageyama gives him a _look_ then, this weird one with one brow cocked a little closer to his hairline than the other and the whisper of a smirk tickling the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t think it’s _exactly_ what you and me do.”

Hinata flounders, then punches him in the arm and walks to the table where his friends sit, Kageyama trailing a little way behind.

“Hey!” He says, and both Yachi and Yamaguchi give enthusiastic waves. Hinata crowds in next to Yachi and slides along the bench to leave room, but Kageyama doesn’t sit. He stands at the edge of the table with his fingers knotted in the hem of his shirt, and Hinata can see the shift of his legs where his toes work in his shoes.

Kageyama looks... _cute_ like this, always does, but Hinata hates that all of it is a side effect of his discomfort and he pats the empty space beside him with a smile that he hopes is at least somewhat encouraging.

“Sit,” he says, and Kageyama’s eyes flash to him. Hinata taps the wood again.

Kageyama’s gaze flits to Yachi, and across the table to Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, and then he shuffles to sit in the empty space and digs his hands into his jacket pockets. He curls over on himself, just like when he was walking, a big C in his seat with his eyes to the table and his shoulders by his ears. Hinata’s stomach twists.

“We got you drinks!” Yamaguchi says, then, pushing two mugs towards them. Hinata knows which is his, can smell it already, sickly sweet and tingling in his nostrils and he smiles his thanks and scoops a dollop of cream onto his finger. The other cup, Yamaguchi slides in front of Kageyama.

“We didn’t know what you’d like, Kageyama,” Yachi says, “but Hinata said...well, he said you didn’t like anything fancy so we just got you a latte. Is that okay?”

Kageyama stares at the drink. His eyes have gone wide, wider than they do even when he’s staring at Hinata, and they look a little glassy as he glares into the mug. Yachi twitches at Hinata’s right, hands rubbing together in her lap. She’s nervous, too, always is about everything, ever, but she’s got a much better grasp of social situations than Kageyama does.

Hinata nudges Kageyama with his elbow. He blinks, then, and lifts his head, flits his eyes to Yachi and back to his cup.

“It’s good,” he says, pulling the mug close and wrapping one big hand around it, “thank you.”

Hinata beams.

Conversation buzzes, after that. A lot of it is rubbish; it’s nonsense bickering between he and Tsukishima, and a lot more nonsense chatter between himself and Yachi and Yamaguchi and there’s a lot of laughing, a little bit of shouting and some crying from Yachi that she adamantly denies is crying, and through it all Hinata watches Kageyama out the corner of his eye.

He doesn’t say a word. Not one, not even when Hinata steers the conversation to places he _could_ jump in. He just...stares at his latte, one hand still cupping the mug, and even from here Hinata can hear his mind whirring, see the cogs turning, clicking and clacking behind the swell of his eyes.

He’s not glaring, at least, but Hinata isn’t sure he likes the deer-in-headlights look any better.

“You’re not thirsty, Kageyama?”

Kageyama’s head snaps up at the sound of his name. Yamaguchi is looking at him with his usual soft smile, all patient and earnest and waiting, and Kageyama licks his lips and swallows. Hinata can see the force of it in the way his jaw presses forward and the thick bob of his throat.

“It’ll be cold now,” Hinata says. Kageyama’s hand withdraws from the mug and drops to his lap.

“What, even a latte is too _boring_ for you?”

Hinata glares at Tsukishima over the table. He can’t judge, really, because he calls Kageyama boring most hours of most days, but there’s something so snide in his tone, the bitterness of it curdling Hinata’s stomach.

“Oi, don’t be an asshole, _Assy-_ shima. Kageyama’s not even that boring, I told you - I told you about his skating, and he likes loads of the same stuff as me, and he’s _really_ good at—” Hinata cuts himself off then, and blushes. He’s been trying through the entire outing to big up Kageyama as much as possible, to make his friends gush and fawn over him enough to bring him out of his shell, even just a little, but...well, there are a limited number of things that are suitable for a friendly environment.

Kageyama pushes some money onto the table and stands from the bench.

“I’m going home,” he says. Hinata gapes at him, but Kageyama doesn’t give him room to argue. He dips into a low bow, face hidden by the flop of his fringe. “Thank you for the drink.”

And then he’s gone, the bell above the door tinkling in his wake.

_“Uwaaaaaaah~”_ Hinata splays his arms over the table and flops there, cheek to the wood, moaning his discontent. “What did you go insulting him for, Tsukishima!”

Tsukishima shrugs a shoulder.

“He didn’t want to be here anyway.”

“Well, maybe if you’d made him feel more _welcome_ —”

“Tsukki’s right, Shouyou,” Yamaguchi cuts in. He’s looking kind of apologetic, all pinched brows and a delicate kind of smile, scratching at the back of his neck. “I don’t think he wanted to be here at all.”

“I _know_ that,” Hinata wails. He shoves himself up, props his chin on his hands and looks forlornly between his friends. “I know, but I thought...I thought maybe getting him to hang out with people might boost his confidence a little, you know?”

Yachi plants a small, soft palm on Hinata’s shoulder.

“It’s nice that you wanna do that, Shou,” she says, “but I don’t think throwing him in at the deepend is a good idea. It’s not bad either!” She adds, and Hinata thinks he must’ve looked about as disheartened as he feels for Yachi to look so horrified. “Just, not the best tactic to start with.”

“The _worst_ one,” Tsukishima says. Hinata sticks out his tongue. “Way to make him even _more_ uncomfortable.”

“Who’s fault is that, huh? If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all!”

Tsukishima gives a sly kind of grin, head cocked to one side.

“Practice what you preach and maybe I will too.”

Hinata doesn’t really get this—he’s never preached in all his life, doesn’t think he’s religious enough—but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Tsukishima is probably, irritatingly, correct. All Hinata did was make Kageyama feel worse.

“What do I do then?”

Yachi and Yamaguchi exchange a look, and then Yachi sits forward, cranes her neck to look Hinata in the face.

“Maybe start...slower? With the little things. _You_ make him feel better about himself before you get everyone else to.”

##

 Kageyama isn’t in the flat when Hinata gets home. He’s a little surprised, honestly, because Kageyama doesn’t have work and he doesn’t have class, and there’s no real reason for him to be anywhere else because...well, as Hinata rudely and painfully pointed out, he doesn’t have any other friends to spend time with.

Hinata kicks his shoes on top of the pile of laundry at the foot of his bed and flops onto the mattress. The sheets smell - not _bad_ , just a little weird, a faint mix of himself and Kageyama and something sweet, fruity, and the scent draws the softest warmth to his cheeks. Hinata remembers the taste of it on his tongue—cherry, just like it said on the packet—smoothing the press of Kageyama’s length into his throat.

Hinata shuffles back to rest on his pillows. His interest is entirely unplanned, but, he reasons, running his fingers close his groin, he’s a teenage boy; nobody is expecting an awful lot of self control where his dick is concerned.

He breathes in the smell of the sheets.There’s something heady behind the sweetness and it flutters his lashes, swells his heart in his chest. Hinata’s imagination isn’t great, never has been all that vivid, but he can picture Kageyama with this smell in his nose; he can see him on the bed right where Hinata lies now, and his neck is craned all the way back, head tucked deep into the pillows while Hinata sucks him.

The skin stretches and curves over his throat, tan and a little flushed, and Hinata can see the bob of his neck as he takes him deeper. He can see the part of his lips by the way his jaw drops, see the peek of a wet, pink tongue dart out to lick them and Hinata mimics him, lifting his hips to meet the press of his palm as he does.

Kageyama always looks so incredibly _good_ like this, putty in Hinata’s hands. He can feel the twitch of his thighs, the trembling muscles and he can hear the quiet _fuck_ dripping from his mouth when Hinata teases his fingers against his balls, cupping and rolling them as he works him with his lips.

All of him looks good. Hinata pushes the waistband of his jeans down his thighs and pulls himself free. He’s already leaking with the barest of touches and he rolls his palm over his head, spreading the slick over his hand to ease the glide of it when he curls his fist around himself. Kageyama’s hand would look better than his, bigger, with long, calloused fingers and in his fantasy he can feel them card through his hair, scrape over his scalp.

He can feel them, and if he looks up _just_ right he can see the muscles at his arms working, pinching under his skin as he pulls at his hair to guide the bob of his mouth. Kageyama’s got broad, thick shoulders, wrapped in muscles in all the most perfect places and Hinata can see them rolling with the arc of his back, sinking into the bed clothes.

Hinata jerks himself faster, hooking the fingers of his spare hand behind his teeth, against his tongue as he pictures Kageyama’s thick length in his mouth. Kageyama would breathe a little more frantically, then, toned chest rising and falling faster, more erratic, with the way Hinata swallows him down and then there’s the flex of his hips—slender, narrow hips—beneath the splay of his hand.

That’s about when he’d move his grip, press his tiny fingers against the straining muscles at Kageyama’s abdomen to hold the rut of his hips against the mattress. Kageyama always, _always_ gets impatient when he’s close and sometimes Hinata lets him. Sometimes he likes it, the fucked-raw feeling at the back of his throat when Kageyama is through, but sometimes, just like he’s doing in his head, he keeps him down. Stretches it out.

Somewhere deep in his fantasy, a door clicks open.

The Kageyama in his head looks fucking _incredible_. Hinata twists his face into his pillow and bites at the fabric, gripping it tight between clenched teeth as he fucks into his fist. He’s close, so close just _thinking_ about the way Kageyama looks and he whines through his nose, wedges his left hand into the back of his pants to tease at his hole.

He presses one thin, wet finger into himself slowly. It’s not often he does it himself—to himself—and the feeling is still a little foreign, not as good as when Kageyama does it for him but the little shallow thrusts of one finger in the tight ring of muscle are just the extra something he needs to _really_ get going.

He lets the pillowcase drop from his teeth to moan, really moan, open and breathy and loud in the silence. He can’t work out what to do with his hips; whether to thrust up into his hand or down onto his fingers and maybe, with a little more patience, he’d try and coordinate it all but in his memory Kageyama is _losing_ it, panting and writhing and behind the syrupy cherry of the lube he can taste him spilling against his tongue, and Hinata is about to come, too, he is, stomach hot and tight and winding ready to snap and then—

“ _Jesus_ , Hinata!”

Kageyama’s voice is strangled, tight with surprise and Hinata yelps, splatters over his shirt. It’s almost _wasted_ , the orgasm, because he can’t well enjoy it when he might be having an honest-to-god heart attack.

“Don’t,” he heaves, come-smeared hand pressed to his come-smeared chest, “don’t sneak _up_ on me like that!”

Kageyama drops his bag to the floor in the doorway. He crosses the room in three big long strides with his big long legs and crawls up over the mattress, drowns Hinata in his shadow as he looms low over him. He teases his fingers along Hinata’s arm, coaxes it up to rest on the mattress beside Hinata’s head.

“What were you thinking about?” He asks, low and throaty.

“You.”

Hinata doesn’t even hesitate. Kageyama would sniff out the lie anyhow, work it out of him if he had to.

Kageyama sucks Hinata’s bottom lip between his teeth. He bites, just enough to sting and he pulls, and Hinata’s back bows, jaw tipping up to follow him. He still doesn’t entirely _get_ it, how Kageyama can go from the shy, knotted string of a boy he was in the cafe to this, big and proud and prowling and _oozing_ with something so smooth, so disarmingly charming that Hinata can hardly catch his breath.

Kageyama lets his lip go with a loud sucking sound. It feels hot and swollen in the air that billows on Kageyama’s breath and Hinata bites at the plump flesh, teasing it between his own teeth.

“What about me?”

“Everything.”

Kageyama looks down at him. Some of the confidence dribbles out of his eyes and a little circle of blue rings the deep, endless black but it comes as quickly as it left and he rolls his hips down, a light drag of his jeans against the underside of Hinata’s cock where it rests soft over his stomach. He jerks, a little too sensitive.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

Hinata curves his neck into the cup of Kageyama’s lips and the lave of his tongue, and a picture emerges against the backs of his eyes, quick as a flash; Kageyama’s tan skin arced against the bed clothes. Hinata moans out a breath, fingers latching into the belt loops of Kageyama’s jeans. His hips buck again and Hinata hisses, nudging him up.

“Too much,” he says, and Kageyama lifts a little space between them. Hinata breathes a soft,  “Sorry,” as Kageyama mouths him, lost to the feel of it.

Kageyama’s answered, “It’s fine,” ghosts over his neck.

Kageyama is still resting close over him, so close he can feel the brush of his knuckles against his cock when Kageyama reaches to unfasten his own jeans.

Hinata is half expecting the press of Kageyama’s length against his own but it doesn’t come. The tickle of his knuckles remains, though, steady and teasing as Kageyama works himself. Kageyama grunts into his neck. Hinata wraps an arm over his back, splaying his fingers to feel the flex of his muscles as he jerks himself; they rove beneath his skin in bulging, twitching waves and Hinata scrapes at them over his shirt, curves his chest to press up against Kageyama’s.

“That’s,” Kageyama pants, and Hinata feels the strain of his back as he curves his hips into his hand, “that’s so hot, you know that? You thinking about me?”

Hinata keens, bringing his free hand up to pull Kageyama away from his neck. He jams their mouths together a little too hard, so hard his lip catches between their teeth and it stings, burns, but Kageyama kisses his back with so much enthusiasm the pain doesn’t really matter.

Kageyama’s wrist moves faster and the next groan he gives is softer, more shaky, spilling over Hinata’s tongue and into his mouth and he swallows it down, spits it back out in a moan of his own.

“What are _you_ thinking about?” Hinata asks. He curls his other hand over Kageyama’s back, too, to rest low against it, wrist propped on the sharp angle of his hip. Kageyama drives into his own palm and his back trembles beneath Hinata’s hands.

“You.”

Hinata flushes hot all over. It’s not like he didn’t expect it—hell, he was half wishing for it—but thinking about it and hearing it, hearing it spill tense and needy from Kageyama’s throat, are two entirely different things.

“You,” he goes on, “touching your cock for me, playing with your ass for _me_.”

Hinata thinks about the first time Kageyama must have said those words. He’d have been nervous, definitely, shaky and unsure and he can imagine that man, the one who taught him everything, showed him everything, beaming with pride as Kageyama took another step along that all-important learning curve.

“I wanna watch you,” he says, “next time.”

Hinata nods. Kageyama’s voice is strained, rung so dry Hinata can barely hear it and then his body bows, hips shaking as he spills into his fist with a surprised kind of cry, like he hadn’t planned on coming then and there at all. Hot fluid spurts over Hinata’s shirt, catches them both where their chests are pressed together.

“Shit,” he breathes, propping his hand on the mattress and dropping his weight on top of Hinata. Hinata hums and drags a hand to cup the back of Kageyama’s head, scratching over his scalp as he catches his breath.

A minute passes, then two, and Kageyama’s breathing goes slow and even and Hinata pats against his shoulder and nudges at his head.

“Kageyama,” he says, “Kageyama you’re...kinda heavy.”

Kageyama grunts, then rolls to his side. Hinata tucks himself back into his jeans and Kageyama does the same, arms wobbling like jelly as he does.

“That was...surprising.” He says, brow a little furrowed, and Hinata wonders if he means the entire encounter itself or the orgasm he clearly had not been expecting. He doesn’t ask, though, just props his head up on his elbow to look Kageyama in the face.

Even just like this, he looks good. Blissed out, a rosy tint to his cheeks and a shine to his eyes, hair a little sweaty and a little messy, and Hinata leans over to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth before he can stop himself.

Yachi’s words swim up from the back of his mind, ghostly, waving like a banner in the wind. _You make him feel better about himself before you get everyone else to._

“You look nice,” he says. Kageyama blinks at him.

“I what?”

“You look nice,” he says again. “Really, _really_ nice. Not just like...hot, or anything, even though you look hot too.”

This is not going to plan. He’s fumbling, reaching, and he flounders, drops his face down into his pillows so he can’t see the way Kageyama is looking at him.

“You look nice _all_ the time. You’re a nice looking person, not just in a sex way.”

Kageyama doesn’t respond. For a solid minute Hinata breathes into his pillow, and he only lifts his head up when the fabric grows damp from the heat of the air billowing out of him. When he does look up, Kageyama is lying flat on his back with an arm thrown over his face, and even beneath his sleeve Hinata can see the red tinting his cheeks.

_God_ , he thinks, a smile pinching at the corners of his mouth, _he’s cute_.

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Kageyama says. “It’s embarrassing.”

“ _That_ is embarrassing? What about all the stuff _you_ say, huh? Mr. _play with your ass for me_.”

“That’s different,” he huffs. “That’s sex. It’s fine when it’s sex.”

“Well,” Hinata says, cuddling his pillow to his chest, “I’m basically telling you I’d play with my ass for you any time, but in like, a not-sex way.”

Kageyama blinks at him again. And then his eyes crinkle at the corners, just a little, and Hinata realises fully just how stupid, how completely and utterly ridiculous he sounds, and before Kageyama has a chance to start laughing Hinata jams the pillow over his face to smother the smile right off of him.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like there are so many YOI easter eggs in tihis fic and they're all completely accidental but as I read over to edit, I'm finding more and more why am I Like This 
> 
> Anyhow things get a little more emo in the next chapter to make up for this entire filth fest, so until then~


	3. Bring Him Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Saturday evening, a notice appears in the ice rink.
> 
> Hinata almost misses it. He’s following Kageyama down the hallway, snickering at the stiff, straight-kneed plod of his legs, and there’s no way he would have spotted the new addition to the bulletin board if it weren’t for the twinkle of glitter dazzling the corner of his eye.
> 
> It’s big, and bold, all garish colours and sparkling letters, and Hinata reads it with his hands gripping tighter and tighter into his hoodie with every word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah!! Second to last chapter lads here we go
> 
> Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos and bookmarks, it's been lovely to read :) I forgot to add to the last chapter, but [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1tBsXJoQls) is the piece that inspired the name for the last chapter. There will be a couple more links in the end notes, if you're interested!!

One Saturday evening, a notice appears in the ice rink.

Hinata almost misses it. He’s following Kageyama down the hallway, snickering at the stiff, straight-kneed plod of his legs, and there’s no way he would have spotted the new addition to the bulletin board if it weren’t for the twinkle of glitter dazzling the corner of his eye.

It’s big, and bold, all garish colours and sparkling letters, and Hinata reads it with his hands gripping tighter and tighter into his hoodie with every word.

“Kageyama!”

Hinata points at the poster and waits for Kageyama to turn himself around on his skates. He is vibrating with excitement, jabbing at the notice with his mitten-clad hands and Kageyama gives it a short, disinterested glance and shrugs a shoulder.

“What about it?” He says.

Hinata jabs harder.

“Have you seen this?”

“Who do you think put it up, stupid?”

Hinata brushes off the insult and stares between Kageyama and the poster and back again.

“Well?” He asks. “Are you gonna do it?”

“It’s for _kids_.”

Hinata eyes the poster again. It’s true; the skating event advertised is aimed, predominantly, at children, with a callout for parents to sign their kids up to take part in a Spring performance in celebration of the new beginnings Spring will bring. There are age groups for performers ranging from as young as eight up to eighteen, and Hinata knows that come Spring, Kageyama will be too old to take part.

“But,” Hinata says,and he points down to the finer print, “they’re also looking for a few experienced skaters to fill in the time slots!”

“I’m not an experienced skater,” Kageyama says, but Hinata shakes his head.

“Bullshit you’re not,” he says, and Kageyama flinches. “You’re like...the best skater in the world—”

“—what _planet_ are you—”

“—and you’d look _so cool_ , Kageyama, everyone would love you.”

Kageyama squirms where he stands. Hinata steps up closer, grinning, and presses his hands on each of Kageyama’s arms where they’re wedged to his sides.

“You’re super great,” he says, “the greatest. And you’ve got _ages_ to work out a routine, and—”

“No.”

It comes out sharp, snappy, and Hinata jolts a step back from the shock of it. Kageyama is glaring at the floor like it's the one that upset him instead of Hinata, all surly and irritable. Hinata shuffles his feet, presses the toes of his shoes together.

“I’m not,” Kageyama starts, puffs out a breath, “I’m not skating in front of all those people. I’m _not_.”

“Okay.”

Hinata doesn’t mean for it to come out as...small as it does, doesn’t mean to sound as hurt as he does because honestly, he shouldn’t have pushed, and he _knows_ he shouldn’t, but Kageyama still looks up at him then with something a little like alarm in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he says. Hinata waves him off.

“Don’t be. C’mon, I wanna see how many spinny jumps you can do before you fall over.”

##

Kageyama has, thus far, fallen a total of four times. Hinata doesn’t keep count of the spins but he’s sure there are an awful lot, enough to make him dizzy and he’s not even moving. He’s too busy _thinking_ to count. He’s thinking about the the poster, the performance, and he's thinking about how good Kageyama would look dancing over the ice, drawing not only Hinata’s gaze but _everyones_ , an entire stadium full of eyes that barely blink, lungs that barely breathe as he whispers his way around the rink.

And he thinks about how good he would _feel_ when the applause begins. He’d get a standing ovation, for sure, and they’d throw flowers and confetti and soft toys and paper hearts and who knows what else and their praise would rain around him, halo him where he stands centre-rink to take his bows. Hinata thinks some people might cry—he knows he would, probably, seeing Kageyama get the credit he deserves—and the cheers would drum a deafening beat.

He thinks about Kageyama skating off the ice, to the barrier, and he thinks about meeting him there with a smile stretched so wide it _hurts_. Kageyama would be smiling, too, broader and broader the closer he gets. He thinks about him hitting the dasher, stepping up off the ice and he’d hug him, then, the biggest, warmest hug he’s ever given, and maybe he’d kiss him, too, just on the cheek because everyone would be watching and Kageyama would blush, grin, maybe kiss him back and—

—another crack and a thump drags him out of his head. Kageyama is heaving himself up off the ice, tiny little chips raining down from his hip as he kicks himself off once more.

“That’s five,” Hinata calls, chin propped on his hands. Kageyama sticks up his middle finger and skates another circuit.

Hinata wants so _badly_ for Kageyama to skate in the damn Spring performance. It’d help, he thinks, boost his confidence even just a little. He thinks Yachi would probably tell him no, that this is in no way starting off _small_ , but Hinata figures there’s enough time between now and April for him to make a little headway.

The Spring performance would just...it’d be a nice littleend goal, that’s all.

What Kageyama needs now, though, is for Hinata to start the ball rolling early.

He pushes himself to his feet. His toes are a little numb inside his shoes—it feels a little colder than usual, with a breeze that sinks deeper into his bones—and Hinata wiggles them as he hops down the stairs and braces his elbows over the barrier. Kageyama peeks over his shoulder, gliding himself back and then he kicks, launches himself up off the heel of one skate and spins for all the world, landing with a neat _chink_ and slipping away again. He cuts to a stop where Hinata stands.

“You look awesome,” Hinata says. Kageyama wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Like, you’re all smooth and _fwuaaaaa_ and it’s almost like you’re flying, you know? Like a big human propeller.”

Kageyama cocks a hand on his hip, carves little ridges in the ice with the heel of one blade.

“...thanks,” he says, pinching his eyes. Hinata grins, and leans his chest over the barrier.

“I don’t think anyone else looks that good skating.”

“If you think I’m gonna blow you in the rink again you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

Hinata drops his head to his arms and sighs. It’s _hard_ , trying to give Kageyama compliments, because each and every time Hinata tries to tell him nicely, _innocently_ , that there is something good about him, he makes it about sex. And it’s even harder to turn it back around, once he starts down that road.

“No,” he says, moaning,” no I just mean you look nice. Strong. Athletic.”

Hinata peaks up when Kageyama doesn’t reply to find him squirming. He pops his chin on his knuckles and smiles. Because Kageyama is cute, he really is, and Hinata would tell him so if he didn’t think Kageyama might burst into flames with one more positive statement. 

“It’s a compliment,” Hinata says slowly, “just...just take it, and thank me, and skate some more.”

Kageyama’s cheeks blush red. He pushes the cuffs of his hoodie to his elbows, drags them back down again, digs his hands in his pockets and Hinata watches his tongue roll in his mouth, tasting his thanks, but for the life of him he can’t seem to spit it out. A couple times his lips open, and Hinata hears the rev of a sound in his throat but then it goes again, shrinking away.

He huffs, and then he kicks his toe, glides the space between them, and bends to press a kiss to Hinata’s grin-sore cheek.

“Thanks,” he says grumpily. He skates away again without another glance and, after a long moment of working through what the _hell_ just happened, Hinata rubs his fingers over the tingling skin at the corner of his mouth, and his smile stretches impossibly wider.

* * *

It’s hard to find a lot of things to really compliment Kageyama on. Hinata discovers this as the days go by and the weeks go on - Kageyama really doesn’t do an awful lot of anything impressive, and honestly, it’s making his plan a little hard to follow through with.

There’s skating, of course, and Hinata spends a whole lot of time telling Kageyama just how great he is at every available opportunity on the rink. It’s a lot of shouting, bellowing over the ice whenever Kageyama does a jump, whooping with his spins, clapping a beat to his steps until he is blushing and yelling, too.

But once they come home, the praise falls short.

Hinata tugs a cushion to his chest and glowers over it. Kageyama is reclined on his pillows, headphones resting on his ears with a book held up over his face. He’s _studying_ , has been all night, glasses Hinata didn’t even know he was supposed to wear settled snug at the top of his nose; Hinata is fairly certain he hasn’t changed his page for at least a half hour, definitely not in the whole time Hinata has been staring at him.

“Do something _interesting_ ,” he seethes quietly, pressing his mouth into his cushion. Kageyama doesn’t hear him over his music. He reads on, and Hinata hugs the cushion harder. “Anything.”

Kageyama flicks the page, glances over it, and turns it back again. Hinata groans.

“Oi,” he calls, and when Kageyama doesn’t respond he shouts a little louder. Kageyama winces, and Hinata knows he’s been heard, but he doesn’t stop reading, doesn’t move to take his headphones off. Hinata frowns a little harder and reaches back, plucking another cushion from his bed and launching it across the space between them.

It hits Kageyama in the arm and he starts, his open book falling right onto his nose. It knocks his glasses askew and Hinata shrinks, ducking his face deep into his cushion and hiding a pinched grin.

“Did you just,” Kageyama says, shoving his headphones out of the way. He scoops up the cushion and brandishes it in the air, “ _throw_ this at me?”

“No.”

His heart stutters in his chest and Hinata is hit with the strongest sense of deja vu. He remembers this moment, this exact moment mere months ago, except in his memory Kageyama is at his desk and he is the old, _boring_ Kageyama, before Hinata knew about the figure skating and the sex and...well, Kageyama as a whole.

His breath hums in his chest. Kageyama is glaring at him, staring and staring through his wonky glasses, and then the cushion is sailing back, smacking into Hinata’s exposed forehead.

Hinata splutters. Kageyama straightens his glasses and keeps on staring, and in the narrow pinch of his eyes and the set of his jaw, Hinata can see a challenge. He fishes up another cushion, and Kageyama removes his glasses.

“Don’t,” he warns, but he is already shoving his book and his headphones and his glasses to the floor and pulling his own pillow out from beneath him. Hinata smiles; if it’s a war Kageyama wants, it’s a war he will get.

And Hinata has an awful lot more ammunition.

He hurls his first weapon, aiming squarely for Kageyama’s face but he deflects it, grabs it up off the floor and fires right back.

“I said _don’t_.”

Kageyama is lifting his other pillow—his _only_ other pillow—and brandishing them both like shields as Hinata gathers a few of his smaller cushions and stacks them in a neat, ready pile.

“Don’t what?” he asks, the picture of innocence, all soft smiles and wide eyes as he takes the top cushion and plumps it out. Kageyama ducks a little further beneath his pillow barricade.

“Don’t even _think_ about it,” he says, and when Hinata picks the next cushion and fluffs it, he shuffles a little further towards the wall and clenches his pillows tighter. “No fair, dumbass, you’ve got more pillows!”

“Should’ve thought about that before you threw one back, _Bakageyama!_ ”

Hinata pitches both plushes at once and Kageyama dives for his mattress, punches one back with a pillow. Hinata cackles even as he throws another, and another, and _another_ and Kageyama gives a few weird little yelps under the onslaught. It goes on and on and _on_ , until there are no cushions left on his bed, just a sea of fallen soldiers littering the floor, and only when the attacks stop does Kageyama risk peering out from over his pillows.

He’s frowning, just like always, but Hinata can see the beginnings of a flush heating his cheeks, and the skin at the corners of his eyes is wrecked and wrinkled and his eyes themselves are bright, burning, big and shiny with that precious, precious humour.

Hinata flops down onto his last cushion and hugs it back to his chest. Kageyama’s head lifts higher until just his chin is hidden and he is _smiling_ , the softest, warmest smile with the pinkest cheeks and the bluest eyes, and Hinata’s stomach goes hot and gooey as he stares at him.

“You’re pretty when you smile.”

He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, honest truth, but it slips past his lips as he thinks it and it’s not a lie, not even a little bit—because Kageyama is super _annoyingly_ pretty when he’s smiling like that—so he doesn’t even bother trying to take it back. Kageyama, for his part, holds his smile a little longer before it fades out and he flops back on the bed and shoves his pillows into his face.

“ _You’re so embarrassing_.”

It comes out all muffled through the fabric, but Hinata can hear it well enough. And he can’t understand, not even a little bit, why Kageyama finds _this_ embarrassing when he can...when he can say some of the things he says.

“It’s true,” he says, because it is, and Kageyama rolls onto his other side to face the wall, big broad back shielding him from Hinata’s view. “You look all...all nice, and stuff. You should do it more often!”

“No.”

“You’ll get wrinkles if you frown all the time.”

Kageyama grunts his reply. Hinata stares at the curl of his shoulders and the tuck of his legs, and his heart feels heavy at the idea that he has somehow made him uncomfortable while being _nice_. If only Kageyama could just...just take a compliment, listen to it and give thanks and move on, without it being a big, embarrassing deal.

And just like that, a brand new Plan One comes together.

## 

Over the weeks that follow, Hinata puts an awful lot of his time into pointing out every little thing he likes about Kageyama. It'll be good practice, he thinks; conditioning, training him like a dog with a whistle. It’s hard, to begin with, picking out the best things to comment on, and there’s an awful lot of reaching involved, stretching to pull something good out of his frowns, or his grunts, or his gross sweaty face when he comes home from his runs or the multitude of other mundane happenings throughout their day.

But, as time goes on, Hinata starts to realise that it...really isn’t that much of a chore at all. The fact is, there are a lot of super nice things about Kageyama that he has just never really noticed before.

Like, he looks really good? All the time. Doesn’t matter what he’s doing, whether it’s cooking or cleaning or studying, drying his hair or pulling on clothes or pulling _off_ clothes; every little thing Kageyama does looks _annoyingly_ nice.

And then there are the individual things, the parts of him that Hinata can never get enough of.

He’s got nice eyes, to start with. Even when they’re buried beneath frowning brows they look good, none of that old boring blue he used to see, just an awful lot of sheen and shine and they’re not—not sky blue, or ocean blue, or any other pretty whimsical metaphorical blue, they’re just...just blue. And they _should_ be boring, they should be, because there’s nothing overly _exciting_ or, or _interesting_ about them.

But Hinata can’t stop looking.

And there’s his hair, too. His hair is nice, always soft and sleek and shiny, smooth like silk, and an awful lot of the time Hinata finds himself wanting to touch it. Even when it’s damp, or sleep-mussed or sweaty after skating or jogging or sex, he wonders what it’d be like to card his hands through it, to grip and pull and stroke and—

And then there’s his face?  Just, all of it. Kageyama’s got a _good_ face, the best face, all high cheeked and strong jawed, angles and lines where Hinata is round, curved. He’s got soft skin, smooth and unmarred, save for the smallest of scars at the corner his brow, a thin white line breaking his tan.

And his lips—his lips, Hinata spends too much time thinking about. They’re expressive, mostly pouty and frowny and sullen, but sometimes, when he’s happy and pretending he isn’t, they stretch in a big wobbly line from cheek to cheek, pressed all thin to hide the curves of his smile, and sometimes when he’s _really_ happy, too happy to hide it, they pull bright and wide, pink over shiny white teeth.

Sometimes when he’s thinking, he chews on them. Nips his bottom lip between his teeth and gnaws, until the skin swells hot and red and wet, and Hinata spends countless, precious hours (that he will never, ever get back) just _staring_ at it. Staring, open and stupid, and now, when Kageyama notices him doing it, he tells him why.

He tells him about his lips, his face, his hair and his eyes and there are other things, too, like his big, broad shoulders and his hands and his hips, his thighs, even his _feet_ (Hinata hates feet, he does, but Kageyama’s aren’t all _that_ terrible, even if they’re a little scabby and a lot of bruised from his skates) and each and every time Kageyama goes red, tomato red, and he stares at the floor or the walls or anything that isn’t Hinata, but he is getting better.

Sometimes, now, he says thank you. _Without_ fumbling.

It’s a step up that takes weeks, and over those weeks, Hinata comes to a long, slow, _horrifying_ realisation.

He _likes_ Kageyama.

He really, really _likes_ Kageyama.

Not just in a sex way—although he very prominently _does_ like him in a sex way—but in another, weirder way, that makes him feel all light and fuzzy but _heavy_ , too. It takes up space in him, swells like a big breath of air in his lungs, buzzes in his stomach, sinks hot in his bones until even his _toes_ are warm with it.

He doesn’t tell Kageyama about that.

He doesn’t, because he and Kageyama are friends. They’re roommates, friends, and he’s heard words like _fuck buddy_ or _friends with benefits_ thrown around, too, and he thinks they fit what they have well enough, and the last thing he wants to do is ruin a good thing with his stupid _feelings_.

* * *

 

Hinata wakes in the morning with a hand between his legs.

He’s still sleepy, only half there, and Kageyama is stroking lazily at the skin high up on his thigh with long, sleep clumsy fingers. Hinata groans; his mouth is dry, tacky, and his eyes are bleary as he blinks himself awake.

He has vague memories of lying in his bed last night with Kageyama curled up behind him, sweaty and naked with every last muscle aching in the best way, but he doesn’t remember falling asleep.

But he must have—they must have—because there is thin, early morning sunlight squeezing through gaps in the curtains and the first early-risers are chirping beyond the windows.

He hums, stretching, and Kageyama’s hand glides to palm over him.

“Morning,” he says, and his breath billows soft over Hinata’s hair. He sounds sleepy, a little grumbly, heavy with the weight of sleep still cloaking him.

Behind him, Kageyama’s hips flex, and Hinata feels the press of him hard and eager against the bottom of his back. Kageyama’s face buries deeper into his hair and Hinata groans, soft and breathy, as Kageyama strokes over him.

They’ve never done it like this, all slow and lazy and gentle, and even when Kageyama abandons his cock to play with his hole—he’s embarrassingly soft and open there, relaxed as he is in his sleepy state—there is no hurry from either of them. Hinata rolls his hips back slowly, turning his face into his pillow to catch his sigh. The fabric is cotton-soft against his cheek and it smells, a strange mix of himself and of Kageyama, and he breathes it in as Kageyama’s knowing fingers work him open.

“Where did,” Kageyama says, breathy, and Hinata feels his fingers withdraw as he props himself up on his elbow, “where did I put the lube.”

Hinata gives a low chuckle and opens his legs to wait. Kageyama is grumbling, shuffling, and Hinata can hear the swish of sheets and the creak of springs as he does, and then a quiet, “Aha,” as he finds what he’s looking for.

“Condom?” He asks, freshly slicked fingers gliding a path deep within him. Hinata shakes his head. Since their first time without one, Hinata has been relatively insistent on keeping them shut firmly away in the draw. He likes it, craves it, the feel of Kageyama bare inside him.

“Stop asking,” Hinata breathes, raspy as Kageyama spreads him. “The answer is always no.”

“I’m just _checking_ , dumbass.”

There is no bite to it, only a soft, pleased kind of hum as Kageyama pushes himself in. Hinata holds his breath as he does—it’s not intentional, just a bad habit, and only when Kageyama has settled himself does Hinata let out a long, low sigh and take a big, shaky breath.

“What have I told you—”

“—about breathing, I know,” Hinata wheezes. Kageyama sets a slow pace, a soft drag out and a long push in, and Hinata arcs into it, hands fisted loosely in the bed sheets. It’s nice, being taken like this. Kageyama is in no rush and the morning doesn’t seem to be, either, passing idly around them as they move.

“Why haven’t we done this before,” Hinata croons softly, backing himself into Kageyama’s thrusts with little undulations of his hips. Kageyama curls an arm tighter around his waist, pulls his back in close and gives a few long, deep presses that roll Hinata’s eyes in their sockets. Kageyama hums.

“Didn’t know it’d be good,” he says. He is still tired, Hinata can tell; his words are slurred and airy, and his every move is sluggish. Hinata rolls his neck to look back, and Kageyama props himself up on an elbow to look down at him.

Hinata’s heart squeezes in his chest.

Kageyama’s eyes are still half-closed, and his hair is ruffled over his forehead, soft and fluffy where it tickles at his brows, and his lip - he’s been biting it, Hinata can tell, because it is plump and pink, damp where his tongue flicks out against it. He looks good, better than Hinata has ever seen him, which seems to be a common theme lately; every look is better, more impossibly beautiful than the last, and honestly he is hoping for the progress to stop some time soon because he isn’t sure how much more he can take.

Kageyama’s head drops, forehead knocking to rest against Hinata’s. It’s not the most comfortable, holding his neck twisted, but there is something intoxicating about the pressure of Kageyama’s brow on his own, about the warmth of his breath against Hinata’s lips and Hinata opens his mouth on a silent, choked moan as Kageyama rolls his hips against him.

“‘Yama,” he breathes, and Kageyama’s forehead presses harder.

Kageyama’s mouth is so close he could kiss it, lips teasing against his own and Hinata would, he’d close what little space there is between them in a heartbeat, but he is struggling enough to breathe with Kageyama _moving_ the way he is, angling his hips just right to smooth over his prostate with every thrust.

“Close,” Kageyama breathes and Hinata nods, nudges Kageyama’s wrist from his chest down, down, over his abdomen, past his hips. He smooths his palm over the back of Kageyama’s hand with shaky, fumbling fingers, and curls them both around his cock.

Kageyama gives him a few long tugs, palming over his head and Hinata is there, _right_ there, gasping and open-mouthed and crooning his pleasure, when a sharp, tinny note blares through the bedroom.

Kageyama’s phone rattles its way across Hinata’s bedside table. It vibrates over the wood and whistles a shrill tune that aches in Hinata’s sleep-sensitive ears.

Kageyama lets him go—Hinata whines at the loss of his touch—and stretches over to silence the alarm. He’s still hot and hard, pressed so deep inside of Hinata he can barely breathe for it. Hinata moans softly, rocks back to press flush down the length of Kageyama’s body.

“Is that your work alarm?”

Kageyama grunts his yes, drops the phone back to the the table and wraps his fist back around Hinata’s shaft, pumping him slowly. He digs his face close again, and this time, his mouth does settle on Hinata’s, soft and slack and open and he breathes against him, smooths his tongue over Hinata’s bottom lip.

“I can be late,” he breathes, tugging a little harder. Hinata keens, and his lifted leg falls against the mattress, tucks up to trap Kageyama’s hand against him. He finds the back of Kageyama’s hand again and holds him, follows the jerk of his arm and he squeezes his fingers as he comes, eyes shut tight and a string of high, breathy gasps falling from his lips.

Kageyama releases his cock to hug him close, fingers pressing stark white prints into the skin where he grips him, rocks his body against his back, hips dragging his length and working Hinata through his orgasm as Kageyama comes, too, with a quiet, grunted _Shouyou_ against Hinata’s mouth and a few deep, shaky thrusts.

Hinata sighs as Kageyama slips out of him. He always feels weirdly empty, after, like a part of him has been dug out and left bare. Kageyama’s hand slides from his waist to rest on his stomach as Hinata rolls flat on his back.

“You said,” he says, “you’ve never done it before? Like that, I mean.”

Kageyama shakes his head. His cheeks are flushed like they always are after, bright and pink and hot right below his eyes, and his mouth is a little slack in his bliss. He shuffles his cheek against the pillow and stretches, softening length poking at Hinata’s hip.

“Oikawa didn’t really do lazy,” he says. Hinata bristles.

It’s not...it’s not that he hates Oikawa—he can’t possibly, hasn’t even met the guy—but he does hate the sound of his name. He hates it whenever it falls from Kageyama’s lips, hates it even more when it is in moments like this; moments that should be intimate, should be just for _them_.

Oikawa’s name taints that.

Hinata lets the stroke of Kageyama’s fingers calm him. They are absent where they brush against his stomach, tracing little patterns like letters over the skin and Hinata breathes, in and out and in and out and lets the angry, boiling jealousy bleed out of him.

He has no _right_ to feel jealous, and even less right to let Kageyama know how he feels.

“We didn’t spend the night together very often,” Kageyama says. Hinata wants to tell him to _shut up_ , that he doesn’t want to hear anymore about Oikawa, that he wishes he’d never brought it up in the first place but he _can’t_ , because it’s so unlike Kageyama to speak openly about anything personal (that isn’t, you know, Explicit Sexual Content) and Hinata doesn’t want to shut him down now.

“No?” He asks, fights a little bit of interest into his tone. Kageyama shakes his head again, gliding his cheek over the pillow until his face presses in close against Hinata’s hair. He takes a big breath in and sighs it back out, and Hinata melts against the mattress.

“Nope.” Kageyama pops the _p_ right in his ear and when Hinata giggles at it, he pushes his nose right up against the side of Hinata’s head and does it again.

“Weird,” Hinata says, wrinkling his nose. “How long were you two a couple?”

The question tastes sour on his tongue and Hinata frowns. He doesn’t think he wants to know the answer - what if it was _years_? What if they were madly in love, highschool sweethearts, broken only because they chose different paths? What if they’re still in _contact_? What if Hinata is just...just a temporary replacement, for Kageyama to get his rocks off before he is finally reunited with his lover?

Hinata shouldn’t care if even an inch of that is true, because he and Kageyama are _friends_ , nothing more and nothing less, and it shouldn’t matter if he goes running back to Oikawa when his university years are up.

It shouldn’t, but it does.

Kageyama’s fingers stop trailing across his stomach.

“We weren’t a couple, dumbass,” he says, and Hinata jolts.

“Huh?”

“What, you thought we were like—like _together?_ ”

Hinata sits up, the rumpled bedsheets falling against his lap.

“Well, yeah. You guys bought—you bought _toys_ together! That’s like...the most couple-y thing ever.”

Kageyama blinks up at him. He looks...miffed, honestly, that Hinata would think he and Oikawa were anything more than what he and Hinata are now.

“I mean, yeah, we did that. But we weren’t like..." his face wrinkles, scrunches like rumpled tissue right at the top of his nose, "in _love_ or anything.”

Kageyama’s face goes a little more pink as he says it, spreads a big embarrassing line from cheek to cheek and right over his nose. He looks cute, and Hinata tells him so, offhand, like he’s been doing with all of his compliments for weeks now.

Kageyama mumbles his thanks against the back of his hand and stretches up, throwing the covers off of him and clambering out of the bed.

“We used to skate together,” Kageyama says. His back is to Hinata as he gathers fresh clothes and piles them onto his bed. “He’s a couple years older than me. He's competing in the Grand Prix circuit this year, I think.”

Hinata makes a mental note of that; if Oikawa competes, if he’s worked his way up into the big leagues, there will be photos or video footage of him somewhere.

Hinata wants to know what he’s up against.

* * *

 

Hinata folds his arms over his chest and stares at his laptop.

It’s been three hours— _three_ —since Kageyama went to work, and since the flat door closed behind him Hinata has done nothing but this: sit, and stare at the little plastic rectangle where it lies atop his bedclothes.

He shouldn’t, he _shouldn’t_ even consider searching Oikawa. He shouldn’t because it’s not his place, none of his business, shouldn’t matter even a little bit to him who Oikawa is and what he’s like and how pretty he is, because a) it's not his place, and b) Kageyama isn’t even  _with_ him anymore. Wasn’t with him, really, to begin with, and Hinata has been reminding his angry, jealous brain of that fact all morning.

But the curiosity is burning, and Hinata has never had a whole lot of self control.

He taps his fingers on his arm and pulls his mouth to the side. This is _stupid_ , he is stupid, Kageyama is stupid and Oikawa is definitely, _definitely_ stupid.

He tugs the laptop closer and flips it open. The fan whirrs a warning as it boots up and Hinata squirms, stretching over the side of the bed and fishing up Kageyama’s discarded jumper. It’s an old one, Hinata thinks, judging by the stretch of the wool and the tattered sleeves, but Kageyama is weirdly fond of it and...well, Hinata is a little bit, too. Because it looks nice on him, _not_ just because Kageyama likes it.

Hinata drags it over his bare torso and settles back with the laptop on his thighs.

He isn’t even sure what he’s meant to be looking for. The search engine stares back at him, cursor winking from the search bar and Hinata hovers his fingers over the crumby keyboard as he considers.

Short and sweet, he thinks, typing _Oikawa figure skating_ and hitting enter.

What he gets is pages upon pages upon _pages_ , hundreds of them, thousands of hits with one name, one face attached to them.

Oikawa Tooru.

Hinata scrolls the results with widening eyes. Oikawa Tooru is...he’s _gorgeous_. He is tall, toned, and he is handsome, all soft, knowing smiles and warm eyes and even in pictures, stills with clever angles and lighting and flashy costumes, he is dripping with something hot and heavy and Hinata can see with alarming clarity exactly why Kageyama would be drawn to him.

He can see that, and he _hates_ it.

Oikawa, it seems, is just about everything that Hinata is not.

He is tall where Hinata is short, toned where Hinata is slim, a little too thin, and he is...he is confident, Hinata can see it in the way he holds himself, in the ease and grace of his smile. He’s flirty, composed, and Hinata is...not.

He’s not, and he has never really cared about that until now.

Right now, though, right at this moment, curled in his messy sheets in Kageyama’s messy jumper with messy hair, sweat-sticky skin and a mountain of dirty laundry _still_ waiting to be cleaned piling at the end of his bed, he wishes more than anything that he was everything Oikawa seems to be.

Hinata loads yet another page of results.

The very first link advertises a video. _Oikawa Tooru_ , it reads, _COC Mens SP, 2015/16._ Hinata doesn’t have a clue what the letters mean, but the thumbnail shows Oikawa in all his entrancing glory, mid jump, Hinata thinks, judging by the twist of his legs and even with every physical force working against him, he _still_ looks good. Like he’s posing for it.

Hinata opens the video.

The announcement is foreign, and Oikawa’s name is butchered over it by faceless voices as the man himself skates a steady circle around the rink. He stretches, twists his back and his shoulders and his hips and the announcers say something funny, they must do, because both of them laugh and nothing on the ice is amusing.

Oikawa settles himself centre rink. The camera pans high over him, the ice under his feet peppered with inky swirls and letters that Hinata doesn’t have time to read. There is a hush, a silence over the crowd, and this is the moment where Kageyama would settle, take his steadying breath.

Oikawa does it, too.

Hinata thinks it must be common practice. It _has_ to be, because he can’t bare the thought that Kageyama learned that from Oikawa on top of everything else.

Unlike the music Kageyama skated to, Oikawa’s has lyrics. They start high and soft and it isn’t until a few words go by that Oikawa starts moving, but when he does, Hinata can see exactly how he has made such a success of himself.

His every move is in sync with the music, writes the lyrics like a story over the ice, spells the desperation with every slice of his blades and Hinata does get caught up in it, of course he does, because Oikawa is talented, he can tell; he is astronomically talented and the crowd loves him, the announcers seem to love him, and Hinata has no doubt that the judges will love him, too.

But he’d rather be watching Kageyama.

Where Oikawa spins stories, Kageyama plays music. He doesn’t just follow where the lyrics tell him to go, he makes the notes his own. Without music, Hinata thinks he could work out Oikawa’s theme well enough; it’s sad, solemn, despairing, and there is a hopelessness to it, too.

It’s beautiful, it really is, but Kageyama could do it so much better. Hinata would be able to hear the pull of the notes in the sweeps of his arms, he’d drag them through the air with him, play on the wind as he spins and jumps, and Hinata would _feel_ it. He’d feel it stir in him like it always does, powerful and overwhelming and he’d wish to be out there with him, to feel the music through the warmth of his skin.

Oikawa is good, a genius maybe, if the comments on the video and the roar of the crowd are anything to go by, but where Oikawa is _good_ , Kageyama is a _miracle worker_.

When the music draws to a close, he gets a standing ovation. He wipes himself clean of his theme and he smiles, cheeky and flirty and Hinata can see people in the audience swooning as he takes his bows. He flicks his hair from his sweaty forehead and twists, bows again, rinse and repeat until every corner of the crowd has seen his thanks and then he skates away, and the video ends.

Hinata closes his laptop.

He’s...mad. Angry at Oikawa for existing, for what he had with Kageyama, but he is angry about his success, too. Angry that Oikawa is praised beyond measure and Kageyama is stuck alone at midnight, skating in the silence with nobody but Hinata for company because he’s too damn _shy_ to make a name for himself.

If only he would just skate in the damn Spring show. Time is running out—it’s already December, and Hinata’s confidence-boosting plans will be on hold over the Christmas period while he is home—and Kageyama is nowhere _near_ ready to perform in front of a crowd.

He pushes his laptop to the floor and flops down in the bed. It’s frustrating, so _so_ frustrating, that Kageyama can’t just...just do it. Just go out and skate like he walways does and be his usual, annoyingly wonderful self, and not panic about it.

It’s _that_ simple. It is, but Hinata supposes that for Kageyama, there’s nothing simple about it. It’s big and scary and overwhelming, too much too soon, and Hinata wishes there was a way he could take all that worry right out of him. All of the hulking concern, the heavy insecurity, he wishes he could just heave it off and throw it away, or at the very _least_ carry it for a while.

Hinata huffs, rolls on his side. The collar of Kageyama’s jumper is too wide on him and it slips down his shoulder, falls to rest on his cheek. It smells nice, like Kageyama’s detergent and his deodorant and just Kageyama in general, and Hinata settles down into the scent with fluttering lashes and flushing cheeks.

Maybe, he thinks, Kageyama would skate if the crowd were smaller. Just a few people. Kenma, perhaps; he’s about as quiet and socially uncomfortable as Kageyama himself, and if Kenma came then so would Kuroo, and if _Kuroo_ came then Bokuto would want to be there, and Akaashi follows wherever Bokuto leads. And of course there’s Yachi and Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima is sort of a package deal between the two of them, and Hinata counts them all off on his fingers and stares down at his hands.

An audience of eight, himself included. Surely Kageyama could do _that_.

Hinata notes it down as a tentative Plan Two.

* * *

Kageyama doesn’t take to Plan Two very well at all.

“Not a chance,” he says, scratching his blades against the ice. He’s moody, Hinata can tell; he isn’t looking at him, just pushing himself in a big grumpy circle around the edge of the rink.

“C’mon, Kageyama! They don’t know anything about skating! They’re gonna think you’re awesome even if you’re actually a huge disaster.”

“I’m _never_ a huge disaster.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Hinata reasons, and when Kageyama shoots a very loud, very angry, potentially murderous glare over at him, he raises his hands in surrender and leans against the dasher.

“That’s not how you go about convincing someone, dumbass!”

“Well, _you_ tell me how to convince you to do it!”

“Why would I do that when I don’t want to skate in front of all your friends.”

Hinata huffs, plops down in his seat. He can hear Kageyama continue his skate but he doesn’t look up, not even at the nick of his skates as he jumps, the shriek of metal on ice as he misses a landing. He just wishes Kageyama knew how _good_ he was, how much people would love to watch him.

Hinata must stay silent for too long, because after a while he hears the telltale thump of Kageyama's toes against the barrier. He’s resting on his forearms, panting, and frowning down at Hinata.

“You’re mad,” he says.

“I’m not mad.”

“Are so,” Kageyama says.

“Am not!”

Kageyama’s lip quirks. He braces his elbows on the barrier and leans over, and Hinata fights to keep the frown on his face because Kageyama looks nice, really, really nice, and Hinata tells him so through pouted lips and crinkled brows.

Kageyama ruffles his hair down over his forehead.

“Thanks,” he grumbles. “Don’t change the subject. You’re pissy because I won’t let your friends come watch me skate.”

“You’re welcome. And I’m not _pissy_. I just don’t get why you can’t let them come watch. It’s no different to me watching! Which I do _every week_. Just like, more eyes.”

“It’s different,” Kageyama says, and his eyes search around the stands, from empty chair to empty chair, anywhere that isn’t Hinata. “I like _you_ watching.”

Hinata narrows his eyes at him.

“Is this...is this a sex thing?”

Kageyama turns to glare at him, face all twisted and sour and so painfully _Kageyama_. When he speaks again it’s reluctant, pushed through gritted teeth.

“No.”

Hinata blinks at him.

This is...a first. It’s _almost_ a compliment, a roundabout one, from Kageyama, that is in no way sex related. Hinata half wants to get it in writing, because it is literally history in the making, but Kageyama is already a little red in the face and Hinata doesn’t want to make this harder for him than it already is.

“Thanks," he says, "I think.”

Kageyama nods.

“Will you,” he starts, and then he huffs, kicks a toe against the dasher, “will you be less mad if I let your friends come?”

“I’m not—” Hinata starts, and then it clicks. Kageyama’s words register, and Hinata’s smile is _painful_. “Definitely! I won’t be mad ever again ever, for anything, for at least a week if you let them come see you. _Uwaaaaah_ Kageyama! They’re gonna love it. I’ve told them how good you are so I bet they’ll—”

“—don’t,” Kageyama says, holding up a hand. “Don’t tell them anymore. Just...just bring them with you next weekend.”

Hinata smiles even wider. He stands, crosses the few feet of space between them and throws his arms around Kageyama’s neck. It’s hard—Kageyama is so much taller, and with his skates he’s taller _still_ and the barrier wedges hard between them, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Kageyama said _yes_ , that Plan Two is a go, and that Kageyama’s arms are wrapping soft and warm around his back, that he smells good, that his breath is tickling Hinata’s hair over his ear and that Hinata doesn’t want to move from here ever.

Kageyama pulls away first. He pushes some space between them and darts back over the ice, kicks into a few big, high spins—Hinata counts _four_ rotations before his blades click back on solid ground—and carves circles around the rink.

Hinata nips back his smile and folds his arms atop the barrier, resting his chin on them. He traces the patterns Kageyama makes and he hums the tune they play.

This time next week, he thinks, grinning, Kageyama will skate just like this, in front of an audience. A small one, yes, but an audience nonetheless.

And it’ll be _awesome_.

* * *

 

The week passes _painfully_ slowly. Kageyama spends an awful lot of time with his headphones on, though he isn’t studying. He just listens, lies on his back with his eyes closed and lets the music play. Hinata spends most of the hours he is doing this just watching him—watching, and hoping Kageyama doesn’t notice him.

Monday creeps into Tuesday and Tuesday melts into Wednesday, and it is late on Thursday evening that they are lying on Hinata’s bed, Hinata with his laptop and Kageyama with his phone, headphones in place, flat against the pillows with his eyes squeezed shut.

Hinata pauses the volleyball game to listen.

Kageyama’s headphones aren’t great—they’re boring, to start, plain and black and completely stickerless—and they bleed sound like nothing else, so Hinata can hear the deep timbre of words, though he can’t quite make them out. Kageyama’s toes are wiggling, ankles rolling and Hinata watches them as they sway to the low beat from the song.

He kicks at Kageyama’s feet, nudging them with his toes.

Kageyama kicks him back and frees an ear.

“What?” he asks, though it’s grumpy and sullen and not at all posed like a question.

“Whatcha listening to?”

“None of your business.”

“Why’d you have to be _rude_ for?”

“Why’d you have be to _nosy_ for,” he counters, and Hinata huffs. He rolls on his side and his laptop slips between them, volleyball game frozen mid-spike. Kageyama pauses his music, too, and the unsettling shriek of strings comes to an abrupt halt.

Hinata sticks out his tongue and Kageyama pinches it between two fingers.

“You’ll find out eventually,” he says. Hinata nods and retracts his tongue, and Kageyama wipes his fingers on Hinata’s shirt.

“I don’t wanna find out eventually,” Hinata moans. Kageyama rolls his eyes and knocks his headphones all the way off, dropping his phone to his chest. “I wanna find out now.”

“Tough.”

Hinata pulls his lips to one side. Kageyama’s phone is unguarded, and before he has time to think, Hinata snatches for it, twisting the screen to catch the name of the song, but Kageyama grabs it back before he has time to read it. The laptop gives an ominous creak between them.

“Oi!” Kageyama snaps, shoving the phone away to one side. He snatches up Hinata’s laptop instead and rolls until his back is to Hinata. “How would you like it if I looked at _your_ stuff, huh?”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Hinata says, although he knows it’s not...strictly true. Kageyama must know so, because he snickers even as Hinata grabs weakly for the laptop over his shoulder.

“I’m gonna find all your weird porn,” he says, and Hinata is about to tell him that, should he find anything weird at all, which he _won’t_ (he will), he is in absolutely no position to judge, but Kageyama freezes before he even opens his mouth.

Hinata peers at the screen over his shoulder, and the colour drains from his face.

All Kageyama has done thus far is click the search bar. That’s it, but below the blank space is a big long list of his search history, and while most of it is innocent enough—volleyball, more volleyball, how do you say pineapple in Spanish, a little more volleyball—there is one line, one glaring line of purple text that stops Hinata’s heart in his chest.

 _Oikawa figure skating_.

Hinata feels a big, bottomless pit open out in his stomach. For a while, Kageyama doesn’t say anything. And then he points, right at the words in his traitorous search history, and turns to look at him.

“What were you searching him for?”

Hinata swallows. This doesn’t have to be a big deal, it doesn’t, because there are bound to be a million convincing lies he could tell that have nothing to do with jealousy, with _feelings_. But he can’t think of a single one.  

“Uh,” he says stupidly. Kageyama raises a brow at him.

“Uh,” he says. Hinata swallows again. His mouth is dry, tongue like sandpaper behind his teeth. Kageyama is waiting for an answer, a real one that isn’t mindless noise, but Hinata doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

 _I was super jealous and I wanted to see my competition_ , doesn’t sound good, and neither does _I’m even more jealous now because he is perfect and I am a lump, a potato, and you are also stupidly, annoyingly perfect_ _and I wish I’d never looked him up_ , or _I like you a lot please buy sex toys with me and don’t mention Oikawa ever again ever_.

“You said he was a good skater,” Hinata says, forcing a high, tight laugh, “I wanted to see if he was better than you.”

Hinata scratches at the back of his neck and Kageyama lifts both brows.

“And? Was he?”

 _No_ , Hinata thinks. He can’t well _say_ that, because Oikawa is a competitor, up there with the world's best, and Kageyama will never believe he is just being friendly if he gives an answer as straight as that.

But if he says _yes_ , he might be tearing down what little confidence he has been painstakingly building up, and that is the absolute last thing he wants to do.

“He’s good,” he says. “He’s good, but so are you.”

Kageyama closes the laptop and rolls over, rolls _right_ over until Hinata is pinned beneath him on the mattress, one of Kageyama’s legs wedged up between his own and his lips sucking bruises into his neck.

“Good.”

Hinata clenches his fingers in the back of Kageyama’s shirt. Kageyama’s teeth rake across his skin and Hinata jumps, rolls his hips up as Kageyama grinds his down.

It isn’t until Kageyama is shucking them both out of their clothes that it occurs to Hinata that the reason he is so wound up, so _eager_ , probably has nothing to do with the compliment, and an awful lot to do with the mention of Oikawa.

Something sour spills in his stomach. Kageyama’s fingers are needy, frantic as he pulls Hinata’s shirt up over his head and they’re _shaking_ as they sink beneath the waistband of his sweats.

Hinata doesn’t _want_ this. He doesn’t _want_ Kageyama to fuck him with Oikawa’s name on his tongue. He doesn’t want to be a body, a hole for Kageyama to use when what he wants isn’t here for the taking.

“Stop,” he says, and Kageyama does. His fingers still and he pants, drags in a shaky breath. Hinata pushes his arms away.

He doesn’t want to be another _toy_. He wants Kageyama to be with _him_ , only him, to touch his skin and kiss his lips and forget about Oikawa, forget about what they had and what they did.

He shoves Kageyama’s shoulder until his back is to the pillows and he climbs to straddle his hips. Kageyama is looking at him with big, blown eyes and a dumbstruck expression and Hinata grabs his jaw in both hands as he settles in his lap.

“I’m topping,” he says.

Kageyama swallows.  

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

And then Hinata kisses him. _Really_ kisses him, with lips and teeth and tongue and he grabs at his neck, his shoulders, his skin as Kageyama’s hands slide up his back. He is burning, insides molten and his skin seers where Kageyama’s fingers press into it, stings where he scratches.

Hinata has never been a possessive person. But right now, he will do _anything_ , anything to let Kageyama know that he is all he needs.

Kageyama must feel the difference in him because there is no resistance, no dominance; he is putty in Hinata’s hands, follows where he leads, let’s Hinata mould and shape and build him.

“ _Shou—_ ” his breath hitches as Hinata digs his fingers deeper. He’s spreading him and stretching him, pressing deep to rub over his prostate and Kageyama is _melting_ into the bed sheets. One of his hands is curled loose around Hinata’s wrist as he works him and his head is tipped to one side, cheek pressed into the pillows.

“ _Hngah-hah_ —Hinata,” he goes on and Hinata hums, smooths his hand up the back of Kageyama’s thigh. He cups at the back of his knee and pushes his leg up, up until it’s curled over close to his chest and then he straightens, withdraws his fingers and reaches for the drawer.

“Don’t,” Kageyama starts, panting, and Hinata looks a question at him. “Don’t need one.”

Hinata swallows. He hasn’t yet had the chance to feel Kageyama around him without a condom, but the thought alone has him shaking.

“Yeah?”

Kageyama nods and reaches for him. His fingers fumble at Hinata’s hips, tugging him closer and Hinata topples, braces his fists on the mattress to prop himself up.

“C’mon, Shouyou,” he says. Hinata feels the press of a heel against the back of his thigh. “Fuck me.”

They’re both shaking as Hinata pushes in. Kageyama’s back bows and he trembles, and Hinata’s arms wobble where they hold him up. It feels _incredible_ —Hinata isn’t sure whether it’s the lack of latex itself or the fact of knowing there is nothing between them, that they are _bare_ to one another that is wrecking him, but there is something squeezing the breath right out of his lungs.

Kageyama looks about as thrown as he feels, all wide eyed and open mouthed, pink cheeks and a shiny, red tongue poking out to wet his lips. Hinata wants to kiss him more than _anything_ but it’s taking every ounce of focus he has to stay still and give Kageyama a minute to adjust. He looks, for once, like he really, honestly needs the break.

Hinata drops to brace his weight on his elbows, and the move drags a low, hoarse moan from Kageyama’s throat.

“Okay?” Hinata asks. Kageyama swallows a big mouthful of dry air and nods.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, Shouyou, _move_.”

Hinata doesn’t think all that much about what he’s doing. He doesn’t fuck to make himself feel good; he rolls his hips in all the right ways to turn Kageyama’s world upside down. This particular session isn’t about getting off—he presses all the way in and grinds his hips up, smiling at the keen that rips from Kageyama’s lips, at the pressure around his cock as Kageyama tenses up, at the feel of him rocking down against him—it’s about showing Kageyama that Hinata is all he needs.

That Oikawa doesn’t mean a thing.

That Hinata is _more_ than enough.

Kageyama tips his head back on the pillows and pants, whines, blunt nails digging into Hinata’s thigh for purchase as Hinata pounds into him. He looks _good_ , wrecked, sweat-slick hair ruffled over his brow and big, dark eyes peering up at him beneath thick lashes.

Hinata has to crane up to kiss him. Kageyama’s hips roll up with him, nudge his weight up onto the top of his back. He stretches for the kiss, too, with eager lips and grabbing hands.

“You’re,” Hinata says, drags himself out slow and slides back in to the hilt, “you’re with _me_.”

If Kageyama is shocked by the announcement, he doesn’t show it. All he does is nod, curl his hand around the back of Hinata’s neck and pull him until their foreheads knock together. Hinata bites back a strangled whimper and nips his lip, grinds his hips harder. Kageyama’s stomach bunches beneath him.

“You don’t—don’t need anyone else.”

He grinds harder, tucks his hips up _just right_ and Kageyama shudders.

“I— _hng-ha-hah_ —fuck, I know.”

Hinata does it again, presses in the same spot over and over until Kageyama’s cock is red, leaking, dripping over his stomach. He’s huffing each breath and there are noises Hinata has never even heard from him before pouring past his lips and Hinata drinks them down, swallows moan after moan and cry after cry.

“Just—just me.”

Kageyama’s hand tightens at the back of his neck.

“Just you.”

Hinata’s stomach goes taut. He bubbles, brews, coils tight and winding and he can feel himself swelling, growing impossibly harder as Kageyama clenches tighter around him.

Kageyama’s spare hand leaves it’s place cocooned beneath the pillow to slip between them, brushing over his cock. Hinata nudges it away and presses in close, so close there is barely room for air between them. Kageyama moans, grabbing at Hinata’s shoulders.

“ _Just_ me.”

Kageyama blinks his eyes all the way open to look at him. They’re hazy, clouded and bottomless, neverending, and Hinata keeps his gaze on them as he thrusts, rutting over Kageyama’s prostate. He keeps his gaze on them as Kageyama’s hand leaves his shoulder, as it slides over the mattress, up to where Hinata is clenching at the bed sheets and he keeps on staring as Kageyama slides his palm beneath Hinata’s, threads their fingers together and squeezes.

He keeps on staring as Kageyama comes. As his eyelids flutter and his cock swells, twitches and spills between them.

He only looks away when he comes, too, with his eyes squeezed shut and his whole body shuddering and stuttering and halting, pressed as deep as he can get.

There is a long moment where they don’t move. They only breathe, sharing the same damp, ragged air until Hinata finds the strength to pull away.

Kageyama gives the softest sigh as he does and Hinata’s heart melts, pooling hot and heavy in his chest. He slides to sit at the edge of the bed as Kageyama shuffles behind him.

A warm hand curls around his hip, and soft lips trail a pattern up his spine. Hinata rolls his neck, lets Kageyama pave a path around the side of his neck, beneath his jaw, up to his ear.

“This feels gross.”

Hinata snorts and leans back. Kageyama’s broad chest supports his narrow shoulders and he knocks his head back, rolls it to rest his forehead against Kageyama’s neck.

“You sound surprised.”

“I am.”

Hinata blinks and sits forward, turning to look Kageyama in the face. He’s still a little red-cheeked but he is cooling, calming.

“What, you’ve never done it without a condom before?”

Kageyama shakes his head, and then he shrugs.

“Oikawa was pretty firm on that; condom, or it doesn't happen.”

“Oh.”

Kageyama shrugs again.

“I didn’t mind,” he says, “he had other partners, better safe than sorry.”

That is about the first happy news Hinata has heard where Oikawa is concerned: Kageyama wasn’t the only one. Kageyama wasn’t special. And Hinata—Hinata got to do something with Kageyama that he has never done before.

He grins, and stretches.

“I suppose,” he says. Kageyama’s hand pinches at his hip and he leans forward, kisses at the corner of his mouth.

“I like it, we should do it again.”

“Mmm,” Hinata hums, “right now?”

Kageyama looks, for a moment, like he’s considering, but then he shakes his head and stretches to his feet. His face scrunches right about his nose, all pinched and tight and it’s _adorable_. Stupidly cute. Hinata hates it.

“ _Gross_ ,” he says again. Hinata bites back a cackle and flops back onto the bed. “I’m gonna go shower.”

Hinata waves him off. He feels giddy, light and airy and full to bursting. His chest is swelling with every breath, heart pumping hard and fast and he rubs a hand over the back of his mouth to wipe away his grin. He shouldn’t be this happy. He isn’t _allowed_ to be this happy, because they are just friends, and this kind of thing shouldn’t be all that important at all.

Something in amongst the bedsheets vibrates.

Hinata fishes around. He finds his laptop, squashed against the edge of the bed, and he finds Kageyama’s headphones, and when he follows the chord he finds Kageyama’s phone, buzzing with a notification.

Hinata ignores it—it’s from a game, a sad reminder that he downloaded the app and it wants to be played—and when he clicks the home button, the music that Kageyama had been listening to flashes up on the screen. Hinata peeks at the doorway. The shower ticks on and the water thunders, and with a cautious eye on the open door, he tugs the headphones up over his ears and presses play. 

Hinata doesn't recognise the tune. It's a weird mix of low voices and pianos, strings, builds and falls, softness and intensity and only when the piece ends does Hinata look at the name of it. 

 _Phantom of the Opera_ \- _Andrew Lloyd Webber_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next weekend, I should be posting the final chapter, so until then~
> 
> Sidenote: [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhL3JI6Pnzg) is the piece that inspired the chapter title, and it is also the programme I pictured while writing Oikawa's performance.


	4. Hello, I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It sends something warm trickling all the way through him, watching Kageyama with his friends. He doesn’t stand to interfere, just watches with the smallest of smiles itching at his lips as they talk, all of them together. Kageyama even smiles, once or twice, though it’s shaky and unsure and so painfully him.
> 
> Hinata sits, and he watches, and something terrible looms up inside of him.
> 
> It’s...it’s those feelings, again. The awful ones, the ones that will ruin everything he and Kageyama have if he were ever to let them loose. And they’re stronger, bigger and bolder than ever, agonising where they squeeze out into every last part of him. He likes Kageyama. He likes Kageyama.
> 
> And, watching him now, bonding with his friends, smiling, buckling beneath the clap of Bokuto’s hands and the scrub of Kuroo’s knuckles against his hair, his heart seizes with something so strong, so powerful it winds him.
> 
> He loves Kageyama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is here...except I have...set myself up...for something else like the IDIOT I am but you will see at the end. ANYWAY I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped me write this by proofreading or just listening to me whinge about it every second of every day (namely esselle, thecheekybrunette and reallycorking), and to everyone who has left me lovely comments or sent me lovely messages on tumblr - you've helped me through a bunch guys thank you so much <3 
> 
> Anyway we're at the end of this installment, so read on, and I hope you enjoy!! There are some fun links at the end for you all if you're interested in watching the videos that inspired the routines and things!!

Hinata is giddy all day on Saturday. He wakes with Kageyama, hovers around him as he dresses, bounces by his side as he eats his breakfast and as he goes for the door, Hinata grabs at his sleeve and beams up at him.

“We’re still okay for tonight, right?”

Kageyama grits his teeth, and nods.

Hinata squeezes his arm. Kageyama still doesn’t look at him, and Hinata has to duck down between him and the door to look him in the eye.

“You’ll be awesome,” he says, “and they’re gonna love it. So don’t worry, okay?”

Kageyama nods again. He doesn’t look all that convinced—never looks convinced of anything—and Hinata stretches up on his toes to press a kiss to Kageyama’s cheek.

“See you later,” Kageyama says.

Hinata steps aside to let him leave, and after the door closes he takes a little time to feel disgustingly, painfully guilty for backing Kageyama into a corner, and then he shakes it off, skips to his phone to double check that everybody _else_ is still okay for tonight, too.

Six enthusiastic affirmatives and one  _I suppose so_ later, Hinata is munching cold rice balls and trying to work out how he’s going to make the day go a little faster.

The hours _drag_ by.

Hinata watches television. He watches reruns of his favourite volleyball games on his laptop, watches videos of figure skaters with names he can’t even pronounce perform spins and leaps and glides in front of the biggest, loudest crowds and thinks about how Kageyama would do it better. He thinks about how the crowds would love him more—these skaters, they draw applause with every move, but Hinata thinks they’d be too stunned for sound as Kageyama worked the ice.

They’d be enthralled, entranced, lost in the notes he spins and the music he plays, so caught up that all they can do is gasp at the best parts—if they can even bring themselves to breathe.

And when he stops, _then_ they’d applaud. They’d go _wild_ , standing and shrieking and crying and clapping til their palms bled.

He watches videos long into the evening , and only when the clock strikes ten does he stop, and close his laptop.

The excitement he feels is painful. It wrenches his gut, curls and twists and butchers his insides and after he showers—the fastest shower he’s ever had, fifteen minutes _max_ —and changes into nicer clothes he snatches up his phone and sends another text.

_I’m ready when you are :)_

His phone pings steadily with responses. Kuroo and Kenma are setting off shortly. Bokuto and Akaashi are almost there, and Yachi, Yamaguchi and Tsukishima are leaving their flat right now. Hinata grins, wiggles to expend a little excess energy, and then he grabs his coat and flies out the door.

It’s cold, bitterly so, and the wind that sweeps over him is biting but, at least, it’s a dry night. Hinata shoves his hands in his coat pockets and buries his mouth in his scarf. It’s stupid, so stupid, but he can’t stop _smiling_. His friends, some of the most important people in his _life_ are going to see Kageyama skate. They’re going to see him, will get to feel what Hinata feels week after week after week, piled in the quiet hush of the rink as Kageyama works his magic.

Hinata skips a few steps and quickens his pace.

When he gets to the rink, Bokuto and Akaashi are already there. Bokuto greets him _loudly_ , as per usual, all raised arms and excited yells and Hinata reciprocates in kind, leaps the last step between them with arms aloft and a squawk in his throat. Akaashi gives a polite bow of his head and a quiet _hello_ , muffled by the scarf curling his neck. Hinata waves, and tucks his hands back in his pockets

“This is so cool,” Bokuto says, “I’ve never been in a rink at night. Is it scary? It sounds scary.”

“Nah, it’s super quiet!”

Akaashi doesn’t speak as Bokuto woops, just keeps his hands buried deep in his coat pockets and passes a low gaze between them. It’s not unusual; Akaashi has always been quiet, well-spoken even in spite of Bokuto’s goading, but even now Hinata still feels a little...unsettled, by his silence.

Bokuto, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care. He wraps an arm around Akaashi’s shoulders and tugs him into his side and Akaashi buries his mouth deeper in his scarf. If Hinata didn’t know better, he’d think he were hiding his smile.

“Oh-ho-ho,” a voice purrs from behind Bokuto and he jumps, swings around and punches at Kuroo’s shoulder. Kuroo’s grin is sly and his gaze is hooded, like always, trained on the places where Bokuto and Akaashi are touching. Bokuto scratches at the back of his head, then hooks a thick arm over Kuroo’s shoulders and around his neck.

“Hey-hey-hey! Don’t sneak _up_ on me!” he yells, ruffling his hand into Kuroo’s scruffy hair. Hinata laughs, and Kenma steps to one side, huddles in Akaashi’s shadow and waves.

“Hi!”

“Who are we waiting for?” Kenma asks. He’s kitten-quiet, eyes big and wide and jewel bright under the streetlights. Hinata looks around.

“Yachi,” he says, “and Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima.”

Kenma nods and side-steps Kuroo and Bokuto as they swing around. Bokuto has him headlocked, scratching his knuckles against Kuroo’s scalp and dodging the desperate swing of his arms.

“Hey—shrimpy,” Kuroo chokes out. A laugh bubbles up out of Hinata’s throat and he waves at the top of Kuroo’s head.

“Sorry we’re late!”

Bokuto and Kuroo still as Yachi jogs up to them, a panicked look wobbling over her lips as she stops, bends with her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

“Sorry,” she says again at everyone's hello. “Tsukishima is plodding.”

Hinata is in no way surprised. He can see Yamaguchi pulling the tall, sullen blonde by the sleeve as they round the corner and Tsukishima drags his feet, takes little, slow steps, looking back longingly over his shoulder.

“Why am I here again?” He asks, and Yamaguchi gets behind him to push him on. Tsukishima backs his weight into Yamaguchi’s pressing fingers.

“Because—” he huffs, shoving a little harder, “we promised Hinata—we’d watch Kageyama skate for a while.”

“I really don’t remember doing that.”

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi wails. He stops, presses his forehead to the top of Tsukishima’s back between his flattened palms and groans. “Please, behave.”

“Oi, _Shitty_ -shima!”

Tsukishima looks up, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Hinata points in accusing finger at him and plants the other hand on his hip.

“You’d better not be an asshole today,” he says. Tsukishima blinks at him. And then he smiles, and it’s all innocent around the edges, pinched eyes and soft lips, the kind of smile that boils Hinata’s blood in the worst way.

“When am I _ever_ ,” he starts, but Hinata cuts him off.

“Literally all of the time. You are always an asshole. Every second of every day, but _please_ today can you like...not be. I know it’s hard,” he goes on. Kuroo and Bokuto are snickering behind their hands and Yachi is looking a little like she might throw up. “It goes against your very nature, I know this, but like...Kageyama is already _super_ nervous. Don’t ruin it.”

Bokuto howls, loud and boisterous, fingers clamped with one hand on Kuroo’s shoulder, the other on Akaashi’s to keep him upright.

“Wrecked,” Kuroo snickers. Tsukishima shoots daggers at the pair of them, and Hinata can feel a fight brewing—not a real one, never a real one where Kuroo and Bokuto are concerned—so he claps, loud in the crisp air, and points to the carpark.

“Let’s just go, okay?”

They follow in a tiny, proud procession with Hinata as their lead, through the carpark and up to the front doors. Once they’re beneath the awning, Hinata fishes out his phone.

Kageyama answers on the third ring.

“Hey!” Hinata chirps the moment the call rings off. Kageyama grunts at him. “We’re outside, can you let us in?”

Kageyama swallows audibly.

“Yeah,” he says. There is an uncomfortable rasp to it, all tight and hoarse and Hinata cups his hand over the mouthpiece, whispers down the line.

“Everyone’s super excited so don’t worry, okay?”

“Hm. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Kageyama hangs up, and Hinata shoves his phone back in his pocket. He can’t stop smiling, _beaming_ , and all of his friends seem giddy, too - all except for Tsukishima, but Hinata doesn’t ever expect more than quiet reluctance from him in any situation _ever_ , so it doesn’t all much matter.

The seconds pass slowly and Hinata vibrates where he stands, surrounded by the muffled conversation of his friends around him, and after what feels like forever the lock clicks and the doors swing open.

Kageyama looks...awful.

Not _really_ , because he couldn’t look awful if he tried, but he’s all pale and a little sweaty and his eyes are darting from face to face without really seeing anyone. He steps to the side, and Bokuto needs no more invitation.

He leads the way with stars in his eyes, staring at the building as it unfolds before him. It’s nothing special, very much the same as it is in the day, maybe a little darker and a little more quiet, but Bokuto is already mesmerised.

“This is so cool,” he says. Akaashi follows close behind, slapping his hand away as he reaches to touch anything and everything in his path. “Is it haunted? I bet it’s haunted.”

“It’s not haunted, Bokuto.”

“Akaashi~”

Hinata lets everyone brush past him before he steps in, too, and Kageyama kicks the door shut. He looks _sick_ , and Hinata’s eyes dart between his pallid face and the backs of his friends heads.

“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” he says.

“I’m not gonna throw up.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cuz you really do look—”

“—I’m _fine._ ”

Hinata blinks up at him. Kageyama licks at his lips and his eyes follow Tsukishima where he brings up the rear, cuff pinched between Yamaguchi’s fingers as he drags him along. He swallows, licks at his lips but his tongue looks dry, cotton in his mouth.

“C’mon.” Hinata nudges him with an elbow and pulls him down the corridor. Kageyama stops by the skate-hire hatchway and wrenches his arm free.

“You go,” he says, “I’ll be there in a second.”

And then he disappears behind the door and out of sight.

As they pile into the stands and take their seats, Hinata half wonders if Kageyama has run away. He’s been gone for _hours_ , it feels like, though nobody else (save for Tsukishima, maybe) seems to be getting impatient.

The rink spreads big and bare before them. In the glare from the overheads, Hinata can see the loops and whorls Kageyama’s skates have carved into the ice; they spin nonsense patterns from one end to the other and Hinata can imagine Kageyama skirting over it, practicing his jumps and his spins and his steps, warming up for his crowd.

There is a crackle, and the speakers blare to life. Something vibrant and peppy booms through them and Bokuto woops, buries his hands between his knees.

Hinata hadn’t expected music. He hadn’t really expected anything, just assumed Kageyama would work through the motions like he always does, but now that the speakers are on and the music is humming, an atmosphere settles over his tiny audience and the eight of them fall silent, waiting.

Kageyama comes back through the doors.

He doesn’t look at them, just stops by the barrier to pull his hoodie up over his head, and it is then that Hinata realises he is, once again, dressed up.

_Oh_.

Kageyama...he’s not just going to skate, not like he does every weekend. He’s going to give them a show.

Hinata’s whole body _thrums_. He digs his hands under his legs and leans forward, right on the edge of his seat, as Kageyama runs a few long, languid circuits around the rink.

The shirt, this time, is black, sheer and silky, billowing about his arms and his waist and his chest like sails in a storm. The slacks are the same, held at his hips with the same belt and Hinata’s stomach flips, jumps and leaks heat right through his gut.

His face flushes hot and red with the memory of the last time—the first time—Kageyama put on such a show for him.

This time, he thinks, he will have to exhibit a little more self control.

Kageyama hits the middle of the rink as the song draws to a close. He pauses, and Hinata watches his shoulders rise and fall as he takes his breath. Silence falls over the speakers.

Beside him, Yachi holds her breath.

The music rolls out over the rink and as the voice in the speakers takes a breathe, Kageyama’s head lifts and his eyes land right on Hinata’s, _right_ on him, where he sits surrounded by his friends and it’s like a cold breeze blowing over him. It winds him, knocks the air from his lungs and chokes him.

The charge is different than last time. There’s none of the suave, bluesy sway to his steps, no smirks, no winks, no bitten lips or roaming hands; this dance is...darker, almost. There’s something romantic to it—Hinata can see it in Kageyama’s lidded eyes, in the floaty drift of his arms and the smooth glide of his skates—-but there is a building sense of desperation to it, too.

It hits at the same time as Kageyama jumps. He takes the air and loops, one-two-three spins and as his blades crash back to the ice the instruments bellow and Bokuto gives a whoop that lifts Kageyama’s eyes from his feet.

Hinata grins at him. He looks less uneasy, now that he’s going, and though Bokuto’s surprised yelp drags him from his trance he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even fumble.

He addresses every seat in the stands with each sweep of his arms, the empty and the occupied alike. Yachi’s fists are clenched on her thighs and for the smallest moment, Hinata looks over at her. She’s staring with wide, golden eyes, following Kageyama’s path like a spotlight. Yamaguchi is entranced, too, and when Hinata looks to his left he sees Kenma, Akaashi, Kuroo and Bokuto all watching with varying levels of excitement budding over their faces.

Pride swells heavy in his chest.

The music grows soft and Kageyama’s blades whisper over the ice, kicking up dust as he draws to a stop, one hand curled up over his brow.

The words that come next are hushed, at first, and Kageyama treads over them like walking on eggshells. He is careful, cautious, builds them up slowly until the voice is booming.

“ _Wow_.”

Kageyama’s blades _chink_ on the ice as he lands, and Hinata turns to see Yamaguchi’s open mouth, his breath still misting around the word.

Nobody, not even _Tsukishima_ , can take their eyes off of Kageyama as he skates. Nobody except for Hinata, who can’t help the grin bubbling over his face as he watches each and every one of his friends grow more and more engrossed, more enthralled with every move Kageyama makes.

It’s over before he knows it. The music draws to a close and Kageyama spins himself _stupid_ before he stills, abrupt, and as soon as the track is over, the applause begins.

It’s _loud,_  even for such a small group. Hinata knows he has Bokuto to thank for that, for the most part—he’s hooting into cupped hands, echoing his praise over the empty air, and Yachi and Yamaguchi are vocal enough with their cheers, too. Kuroo claps hard and booming, and Kenma and Akaashi applaud with polite, sharp smacks of their palms. Tsukishima gives a few reluctant pats, fingertip to fingertip, before folding his arms and staring, resolute, at anything that is _not_ Kageyama.

Kageyama, for his part, gives the cutest, shyest smile Hinata has ever seen on anyone, ever, in his entire life. Ever. He bows, a tiny little bend of his waist as he catches his breath.

“That was _awesome_!” Bokuto yells, and a few enthusiastic nods and hums follow. Hinata rubs his thighs together against his seat.

Kageyama thanks them quietly. He’s still uncomfortable, Hinata can tell; it’s an awful lot of praise to take in and he still isn’t sure how to handle it, even with all of the practice Hinata has given him. He scratches at the back of his head and Hinata’s heart melts in his chest.

The seats around him flip back up as his friends stand, clamber down the stairs to the barrier. Kageyama skates a little closer to them and hovers there, listening to the bombardment of praise, the barrage of questions.

It sends something warm trickling all the way through him, watching Kageyama with his friends. He doesn’t stand to interfere, just watches with the smallest of smiles itching at his lips as they talk, all of them together. Kageyama even _smiles_ , once or twice, though it’s shaky and unsure and so painfully _him_.

Hinata sits, and he watches, and something terrible looms up inside of him.

It’s...it’s those _feelings_ , again. The awful ones, the ones that will ruin everything he and Kageyama have if he were ever to let them loose. And they’re _stronger_ , bigger and bolder than ever, agonising where they squeeze out into every last part of him. He likes Kageyama. He _likes_ Kageyama.

And, watching him now, bonding with his friends, smiling, buckling beneath the clap of Bokuto’s hands and the scrub of Kuroo’s knuckles against his hair, his heart seizes with something so strong, so powerful it winds him.

He _loves_ Kageyama.

_Shit_ , he loves him. He _loves_ him. He loves his stupid, clumsy smile and his grumpy pout and his frowning brows. He loves his eyes, his nose, his lips, his whole face, and his hands, his broad back and big shoulders, his arms, his legs, his _feet_ . He loves how he walks, how he sleeps, how he eats, even loves the most stupid, most _boring_ things about him.

_Fuck_.

Oh, this is not good. This is very not good. Hinata would go so far as to say this is, in fact, very horribly bad. The _worst_ , even.

Hinata tucks his face between his knees.

He can’t do this. He can’t _feel_ like this—it wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. None of it, not the skating and the sex and, hell, the _friendship_ shouldn’t have happened in the first place. They should have stayed as they were before, together but never _together_ , sharing their tiny room in their tiny flat and remaining blissfully ignorant to one another.

It should have stayed like that. And if it had, Hinata wouldn’t feel like this: giddy and bursting and guilty and _awful_ all at once.

He wouldn’t be here in the rink, and Kageyama wouldn’t be here, would never have had to perform against his will like a _puppet_ , a party trick for Hinata to parade. He’d be happy like he was before, quiet and unassuming, comfortable in his mundane, day-to-day, extraordinary existence.

But Hinata had to fall in _love_ with him. Like a big idiot.

“Oi, shrimpy!”

He raises his head. Kuroo is waving at him, and he points to the door.

“We’re gonna go,” he says.

“Thanks, Shouyou,” Kenma says, and then he turns and gives the smallest bow to Kageyama where he stands on the ice. Kageyama returns it in kind, and one by one, Hinata’s friends take their leave.

When the door closes against Tsukishima’s back, Kageyama puffs out a breath. Hinata wriggles in his seat.

“Shouldn’t you go lock the door?”

“It’s on a latch, stupid,” he says. He skates the last of the distance up to the barrier and wraps his elbows over it. Hinata nods, chews on his thumbnail.

“How was that?”

“Good,” he says. “You should do it again, at the Spring show.”

Kageyama frowns down at him.

“I already told you, no.”

“You told me no when I asked about my friends coming, too, and look how that turned out.”

Kageyama pinches his eyes at him. And still, Hinata doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get how Kageyama can be so confident in one aspect of his life and so _lost_ in everything else. He’s _good_ at skating, the best _ever_ , probably—because Hinata can’t imagine someone he’d rather watch—and yet he refuses to let anyone see that.

And on the flip side, he is good at sex. He’s _great_ at sex. He has no qualms there, none at all, and Hinata just doesn’t _get_ it.

“Just...be like you are in bed,” Hinata says, “but like, on the ice. In front of everyone.”

Kageyama pulls a face.

“It’s not even a little bit similar, stupid,” he says.

“It’s exactly the same! You go out there, you do your thing, you don’t be nervous about it and everyone is happy.”

“It’s _different_ ,” Kageyama seethes. He’s angry, Hinata can tell—boiling, blood bubbling under his skin and on any other day, Hinata might back down. Let it be. But today he is in love, and he is panicking, and Kageyama is being unreasonable and he doesn’t _understand_.

“How?” he asks. “How is it different?”

“Sex is two people,” he says.

“Three, that one time, you said,” Hinata cuts in. Kageyama gives him a disbelieving look before he nods his concession and grits his teeth.

“My point,” he says, “is that it’s not a crowd. If it goes wrong, if I mess up or do something stupid or whatever, there’s only one—”

“—or two—”

“—or _two_ people to see it. This is...an audience. A big one. And if I fuck up—”

“—but that’s the thing!” Hinata goes on. He stands, marches to the barrier. “You won’t fuck up! You know what you’re doing and you’re _good_ at it.”

Kageyama growls, then, low in his throat and he tosses his arms, feet wobbling over the ice.

“Why can’t you understand that this is hard for me?”

“I _know_ it is,” Hinata says, gritting his teeth. And he does know, he can see that it’s hard—he can see the toll it takes, the pressure that rounds Kageyama’s shoulders and sags his head—he can see it, and he hates it. He _hates_ that Kageyama feels out of place in his own skin and all he wants to do, all he’s _trying_ to do, is help him fix that.

If Oikawa can do it with sex, Hinata can do it with everything else. He _can_. Just, if Kageyama will let him.

But, he thinks, maybe he shouldn’t be trying. Maybe it will be too hard to push him the way he should now, knowing that his feelings have a big scary name to them. Maybe he should leave it to somebody who cares less, somebody who doesn’t mind seeing him squirm through the hardest parts to make himself better.

“I know it’s hard,” he says. “But I don’t want it to be hard anymore.”

“What, because it’s such a _chore_ for you to handle?”

Hinata bristles, and guilt  unfurls in a big, lazy heap in his stomach.

“No,” he spits, “no, you’re not a _chore_. You’re my b—best friend, _stupid_ , and I don’t—” he cuts himself off with a huff. There are words he wants to say and feelings he wants to convey but he doesn’t know _how_ , not without giving away too much, without ruining everything.

Kageyama doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t, but he softens considerably and his hands fall loose at his sides. He stares a little longer and then he swallows, kicks the toe of on skate against the ice.

“Thanks, I guess,” he says, and Hinata fights the will to roll his eyes. “But I’m not doing the Spring show.”

“Fine.”

Hinata would like to argue. He’d like to bicker about it long into the night, all the way home and back in the flat and maybe in the morning, too, but he is _tired_. He is suddenly incredibly, overwhelmingly tired.

“Can we go home soon?”

Kageyama, evidently, doesn’t have the will to argue either. He doesn’t even _try_. Instead he nods, and Hinata waits with his hands tucked between his knees as Kageyama changes from his skates to his boots and packs away his things.

Outside, a bitter wind blows. It’s still not strong, but it is _cold_ , freezing, and Hinata dips his face into his scarf as they walk to keep his nose warm. Beside him, Kageyama is doing the same, hands burrowed deep in his coat pockets and his hat pulled down low over his ears.

Hinata tries his best not to look at him. He’d like to—he always likes to—but he’s too worried about how it will feel, how it will warm him to see the rosy pink of his cheeks or his cold-bitten nose, how his chest will swell at the frown of his brows, tugged low beneath the brim of his hat, how his lips will pull at the sight of him wrapped warm and cosy in his winter wear, and how much he will love him for all of it.

Hinata tucks himself in tighter. He can feel the strain of his shoulders as they settle in lower to shroud him. He has never really understood, until now, why Kageyama stands the way he does when he is nervous or shy or self-conscious, but here, in this moment, he gets it. He can understand the cover the curl of his shoulders gives him; like a cloak, hiding the deepest, darkest parts of him, the things he doesn’t want Kageyama to see.

Kageyama is still looking, though. Hinata can feel him staring, eyes warming patches on his pale cheeks. This is a moment they have had before, Hinata remembers. It feels like years ago, in a time before he caught Feelings, before he would forever be dancing along the edge of disaster with Kageyama.

“You look cute.”

Hinata blinks, and looks up. Kageyama has a gloved hand pressed over his mouth, pushing his scarf right up against his lips and though the words were muffled, breathed through fabric, Hinata has heard them. _You look cute_.

Kageyama’s cheeks are growing redder and redder by the second. Hinata stares at him and watches the colour run, up up _up_ until every inch of skin is burning.

And suddenly, he understands why Kageyama can’t take his compliments, too. He wants to shy away, to wave his arms and shake his head and hide the heat steaming up his face because it’s _embarrassing_ , so embarrassing, and it makes him so happy he can hardly stand it.

“Thanks,” he squeaks, and then he hurries on, marches a few quick steps ahead so he doesn’t have to look Kageyama in the eye anymore. His heart hammers, drums against his ribcage. He shouldn’t be this happy.

He shouldn’t, but it’s all he can think about the rest of the way home. _You look cute. You look cute. You look cute._

In the flat, Kageyama tries to kiss him.

Hinata desperately wants to let him—he wants to feel the brush of Kageyama’s lips on his own, always a little cracked and dry but warm enough, and he wants to feel the press of his fingers on his neck, in his hair, at his waist or his hips and he wants to feel the weight of him, the _heat_ of him, but he can’t.

He can’t, because these _feelings_ —they need to stop.

And to do that, Hinata is going to have to take a step back.

Starting now.

* * *

Christmas passes by in a blur. New Years, too, and before Hinata knows it January has crept in, dark and cold and dry and an awful lot like December, and it is time, already, to head back to the flat.

Hinata doesn’t think he’s ever dreaded anything more in his life.

The thing is, he has missed Kageyama. He’s missed watching him skate, and he has missed living with him, sleeping with him, bothering him as he tries to study and _being_ bothered while _he_ tries to study and he has missed all the little things, too. The tiny, insignificant things, like how Kageyama looks after a shower, dressed in his sweats with his hair still dripping, comfortable and at home with _him_. Or how he smells, clean and warm and always a little minty, or how he sounds when they fight—he’s always so _grumpy_ and grouchy, all growls and groans and scoffs—or when they kiss, or when they fuck.

He has missed all of this, but he wishes so badly that he hadn’t.

All he can think about, on the bus and the train and in the taxi, because his bags are too heavy to carry from the station, and even on the walk up the stairwell, past door after door after door that isn’t theirs, is that in hours, in minutes, in _seconds_ he will have to face Kageyama, and continue pretending his feelings don’t exist.

And until he can do that convincingly, he will just have to keep his distance.

Hinata twists his key in the lock and pushes the door.

The kitchen is steaming, windows misted as Kageyama stirs the simmering contents of a pot on the stove. Whatever it is, it smells _amazing_. Hinata drags his bags in behind him and closes the door and as he does, Kageyama looks up at him.

At some point over the holidays, Kageyama has had a hair cut. It’s shorter around the sides and the back though the top still hangs a little long, fringe sitting low enough to sweep into his eyes. Hinata _loves_ it, and for that he hates himself, just a little.

“Hey,” Kageyama says, taps his spoon against the pot and drops the lid on it. “I didn’t think it’d take this long to cook so it’s gonna be a little later than I planned.”

Hinata swallows. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say, or do, or _feel_ at the idea that Kageyama has cooked for him. What he does feel is a hot sense of happiness, the gooey kind that sits sticky and tacky like toffee in his chest. It’s warm and syrupy and it fills him, and Hinata bites it all back with clenched teeth and the shrug of one shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he says, “I’m not hungry anyways.” _Lies_. He’s starving, hasn’t eaten since breakfast that morning and Kageyama knows it, too, because Hinata’s stomach chooses that moment to loudly and boisterously betray him. It gurgles, and Kageyama raises a brow at him.

“There’s plenty, if you want it.”

Hinata does want it. He wants it very much, partly because it smells mouth-watering and partly because Kageyama cooked it, but he can’t indulge now. He can’t set himself up for failure right off the bat.

Hinata lugs his bag up on his shoulder and smiles.

“Thanks, but I’ve been travelling all day so…” he gestures to his bedroom— _t_ _heir_ bedroom, _god_ this is going to be hard—and stretches his mouth in the biggest, most fake yawn. “I’m just gonna sleep.”

Kageyama doesn’t say anything more. He shrugs, stirs the pot again, then leans on the counter and pulls out his phone.

Hinata leans back on the bedroom door as he closes it behind him. The room smells so much of Kageyama, of his soap and his shampoo and his detergent and Hinata takes a big, shaky breath in and lets all of it swell in him.

Tomorrow, he thinks, dropping his bag by the bed and flopping face-down on the mattress, tomorrow he is buying them an air freshener. One of the fancy, plug-in ones, something so strong it will overpower everything else.

He must have been an awful lot more tired than he thought he was, because when he opens his eyes again it is dark all around him. A blanket sits haphazard over his back and his shoes are no longer on his feet, and five feet across from him, illuminated by big, pearly shafts of moonlight, Kageyama sleeps.

He sleeps like he always does, flat on his back, the bedsheets a neat line across his shoulders and his face soft, peaceful.

Hinata rolls onto his side and curls the blanket closer to him. Kageyama breathes deep, lets it out slow, and whatever he is dreaming of must be troubling because his brow keeps twitching, crinkling low over his eyes.

Hinata shouldn’t be watching. He shouldn’t be, but he can’t look away.

Kageyama...he _doesn’t_ always sleep like this. Hinata clenches his fist into the blanket and tugs it close under his nose—it smells like Kageyama, too, and Hinata takes a deep breath of it. He sleeps like this, all _boring_ and Kageyama-like only when he is alone, in his own bed.

When they sleep together, Kageyama sleeps on his side. He sleeps with an arm around Hinata’s waist, either at his back or his front and he sleeps with his nose in Hinata’s hair, and the blankets rumple over them any which-way and even with the warmth of the sheet seeping into him, Hinata feels cold. It’s _lonely_ , in bed on his own, and maybe it felt like this all Christmas at home but it’s worse now, so much worse with Kageyama so close to him.

Kageyama snores softly, and Hinata rolls onto his other side.

No more sleeping together. No more sharing pillows and blankets and beds, no more shared body heat, shared breaths, no more shared _anything_. Just-friends don’t do that.

Kageyama gives another little grunt in his sleep and Hinata pulls a spare cushion over his head, presses it against his ear to shut out the noise.

Three more months. That’s it, and then their lease will be up, and Hinata can move out, away, in with somebody he can stay just-friends with without his stupid heart getting mixed up in it all.

Behind him, Kageyama moans in his sleep, and Hinata squeezes the pillow tighter against his head and scrunches his eyes shut.

This is going to be the hardest three months of his _life_.

* * *

There are things that Hinata finds hard, being back in the flat. Refusing Kageyama’s home cooking, rejecting his kisses and touches and every attempt he makes at initiating anything, even the sly glances he shoots at the wardrobe—ignoring his presence _entirely_ , it seems, has become a problem.

But the hardest thing, Hinata finds, is staying home on Saturday night as the clock ticks over past ten, and eleven, and twelve when Kageyama will be skating at the rink.

He _aches_ for it as the minutes go on, stretching forever and ever, it seems, almost like the clock is slowing itself down, waiting for him to leave.

He watches the hands move and he waits, and waits, and waits until finally the door clicks open, and only then does he pretend to sleep.

Week after week, he continues in the same pattern. Refuse, reject, ignore; refuse, reject, ignore; refuse, reject, ignore and the longer it goes on, the more Kageyama stops trying.

That should be a good thing—it’s what Hinata wanted, after all, a little peace and a little space to get over himself—but he is left feeling...empty. Sad, and empty, and there is something pulling in him, tugging like a fishing line hooked right behind his navel and the longer he ignores it, the stronger it pulls.

By mid-March, things are back to the way they once were. Days go by, and Hinata barely even notices Kageyama’s presence in the flat. It’s like he has melted, regressed to that old, boring, invisible Kageyama, blending with the furniture, and Hinata should be happy.

He should be happy, and he also should have fully gotten over his Feelings by now.

But neither of those things are true.

The misery doesn’t leave, and neither do the feelings. He still gets butterflies for every second that he and Kageyama are together, and he still thinks about him more than he should (a lot more than he should, in ways friends aren’t supposed to think about friends, even if they _did_ used to sleep together), and even when they aren’t together, even when days go by when he doesn’t notice Kageyama, he still can’t stop thinking about him at all.

When Hinata wakes up on April 1st, something about the day feels different.

He isn’t sure, exactly, what it is. Perhaps it’s the flowers blooming beyond his window, bright and pink and vibrant throughout the whole city, or perhaps it’s the sunny weather, warm for the first time since last summer.

Perhaps it’s the empty flat, though for a Saturday, that’s nothing new.

Hinata stretches in his bed.

The room feels eerily quiet. It’s the lack of background noise, Hinata thinks; the sound of students beyond the window is subdued, with most of them heading home for the break before the new academic year begins. Hinata, too, will be leaving the following weekend, and when he goes he will be packing the entire room away with him.

Well, his half of it, at least. He doesn’t even _know_ what Kageyama is doing for accommodation in the new year, hasn’t even bothered asking. Hinata will be taking the spare bedroom in Kenma and Kuroo’s flat—it’s small, an awful lot smaller than his and Kageyama’s room now, but he will in the least have a little privacy and, most importantly, an _awful_ lot of space from Kageyama.

He spends most of the day packing.

It’s all little, nonessential things; the items he unpacked upon moving and left to gather dust as the year went on, and he shoves them all into the bottom of a suitcase, crams and crams until it is full.

His class books go next. With his final exams over, he won’t be needing them, and he throws files and notebooks full of useless scribbles in on top of them. His reading books go, too - he only brought them to look clever in the first place, but with _Kageyama_ as his roommate he never had to keep up the guise. Hinata dances his fingers over the dusty spine of one of his mother's books, stolen from her bookshelf and stowed away, and as he reads the title he smiles.

Kageyama likes this book.

Hinata knows so because he pointed it out, once, weeks after they’d become friends, after their first encounter at the rink, stretched bare on Hinata’s bed and panting beneath the lamp light.

“I read that when I was in high school,” he’d said, trailing his fingertips over Hinata’s arm. Hinata had given an airy snicker, gasped with spare breath he didn’t yet have, pinching at Kageyama’s hand as it tickle over him.

“Didn’t know you could read,” he’d said, even though he did, he _did_ know because Kageyama read an awful lot, all books for his classes with lots of numbers and formulas and definitions Hinata would never understand.

“Oi,” he’d said, and he had raked long fingers into Hinata’s hair. Hinata can still feel the sting of the pull, the tender skin of his scalp where Kageyama had yanked at him, and he can still feel the warmth where he had soothed his roots after. “Just because _you_ can’t read, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t.”

“I can read _fine_ , _Bakageyama!”_ Hinata had swatted his hand away, then, and Kageyama had arched out over the mattress and splayed a palm over his stomach.

“How many of those books have you read.”

“Like, four,” he had said, and Kageyama had scoffed.

“Tell me what happens in _one_ of them.”

Hinata didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t, because he’d never so much as read the blurb on _one_ of them.

“If you’re so clever,” he’d said instead, “you tell _me_ the plot of one of them.”

And he had. He’d told him in great detail, the start and the middle and the end and all the drama in between, and Hinata had been surprised by how...rapt he’d been, listening. It was nice, to hear Kageyama spin a story, and it was nicer still to feel the absent stroke of Kageyama’s fingers over his skin, teasing shapes against him as he spoke to the ceiling.

Hinata can remember the look on his face as he spoke. It was still something new, then, to see Kageyama so at ease, and Hinata had spent most of the story watching every emotion play over his face. He’d gone from boring, robotic to happy, and sad, and somewhere in between something like excitement struck a light in his eyes and tinted his cheeks in pink and Hinata had watched him with butterflies warming his stomach.

Perhaps then he should have realised that his _like_ was a little more than like. It’s easy to see, now, how much deeper it went even then.

Hinata tosses the book in his suitcase and moves on.

Next, he empties the desk. It’s mostly useless clutter, papers full of doodles and forms he probably should have handed in to somebody at some point, and something bright, vibrant, all glitter and sparkles and colour and it is torn, ripped from the top of something along a nice, neat line, and it looks oddly familiar, though Hinata can’t quite place it, and he doesn't care enough to read and find out. He should sort through them, really, and today would be a good time to do it, with the flat to himself and nothing better to do, but it feels like an awful lot of effort and instead he piles them all on top of his books and resolves to deal with it another day.

In amongst the mass of papers, Hinata finds a note.

It’s crumpled, chicken-scratch scribbles over the torn corner of a page. Hinata straightens it out against his thigh and squints at it.

Kageyama’s writing has always been hard to read, but age and wear have made it near indecipherable and Hinata doesn’t think he’d be able to make even a little bit of sense of it, if he hadn’t read it before.

He’d found it the morning after that first fight. Kageyama must have left early because the light peaking through the curtains was thin and murky and the streets below their window were quiet. He remembers feeling a little fuzzy around the edges, stuffy and congested and _tired_ , still so tired, but at least he was warmer.

It took him a while to get out of bed. For a long time he dozed, lay amongst the blankets and the pillows and let himself drift in and out of consciousness, until finally the growl and grumble of his stomach roused him.

Rolling over, he’d spotted the note on the nightstand beside his phone and his alarm clock. Even then, it was hard to read, and Hinata had fumbled to pick it up off the cool wood with stiff, sleep-numb fingers.

_Dumbass_ ,

_Get a shower. Don’t put the water too hot, I read that’s a bad idea and you might die. But also keep warm and stay in the flat. And stop saying sorry, it’s really annoying._

_Kageyama._

Hinata brushes his fingers over the worn letters. He doesn’t even remember why he kept the stupid thing in the first place. Maybe he didn’t mean to—maybe he threw it on his desk with all the other crap to toss away later, and maybe it got lost, buried in amongst mountains of worthless papers—or maybe he did, maybe he smiled at the note and folded it to his chest and hid it beneath his notes so Kageyama wouldn’t see that he’d kept it.

Hinata can’t remember, but he has a sneaking suspicion.

He stares at it now, and he looks at their rubbish bin, and at his suitcase, and back at the note spread across his thigh. He wiggles his toes. He _should_ throw it, he should, because keeping it is really weird—it’s scruffy, and it’s meaningless, and in another few months he might not even remember what it says—but his heart feels heavy when he thinks about getting rid of the thing.

He swallows down the rock in his throat, and scrunches the paper in his fist. It _aches_ , like he’s crumpling his own stupid, paper heart in his hand, squeezing the life right out of it, ringing it dry until nothing is left. And then he tosses it, and it lands in amongst all of their accumulated rubbish and sits, staring back at him.

It looks out of place with the cans and the wrappers and—Hinata pretends he doesn’t see the empty condom packets. He’s been spending so much of his time in different flats, with Kuroo and Kenma, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, and he doesn’t know what Kageyama has been up to in his absence.

Can’t bear to think about it.

The sky grows dark without him. He spends the rest of the afternoon on his laptop, watching volleyball games he and Kageyama didn’t see together, and the day leaves him behind.

And still, as the hours go on, something niggles at him. It tickles at the back of his mind, poking and prodding but every time he snatches for it, it ducks away, only to peak out of the fog and whisper once more.

It is only when the clock ticks over to seven that Hinata works out what it is.

The Spring show at the rink.

If only Kageyama had been less _boring_ , less nervous, less shy, he’d be preparing to step out on the ice right now. He’d be preparing to skate in front of all those people—parents, mostly, Hinata thinks, families of the younger performers—and he can see him now, in his fancy shirt and his slacks, laces pulled tight and tucker beneath the hems, shoulders rising and sinking with every big calming breath.

He’d be so _scared_ , the big idiot. So afraid that everyone would hate him, that he’d mess up, do something stupid or embarrassing or disastrous, all pale-faced and wide-eyed with red, bitten lips, tongue dry behind his teeth.

Despite himself, his lips pull into a smile. He’s spent so much of his time in that rink, watching and goading and loving every stupid moment. He can see it, exactly how it’d play out—how he’d skate his warm-up loop, how he’d settle centre rink as the audience settled, as the music geared up and he can see the big, calming breath he’d take, inhaling all of that panic and stress and nerves and letting it all out, and he can see his eyes, sharp and bright and focused right on _him_.

He shouldn’t be crying, thinking about it. He shouldn’t be, but he is, and once the tears start falling they just. Don’t. Stop.

If only he’d never gone to that stupid rink. If he’d never followed him, if he’d never let his blind curiosity get the better of him. Maybe if he hadn’t fallen asleep, hadn’t gotten himself locked in, hadn’t seen Kageyama skate this wouldn’t be a problem. He’d be relaxing right now, watching his favourite game—it’s too tied up in _Kageyama_ and his Feelings for him to watch it, now, wrecked and ruined by his own stupid, useless heart—not thinking about Kageyama skating for a crowd.

If he’d never gone, never seen that stupid, garish poster, with all it’s sparkles and glitter and colours—

Hinata shoots up in the bed.

The suitcase full of papers is still open at the foot of the bed. Hinata scrambles for it, hangs with his torso off the edge of the mattress and he rifles through, tosses page after page aside until, there, beneath a heap of discarded worksheets, he finds what he’s looking for.

He pulls the glossy sheet towards him, and as he reads it, his hands start to shake.

It’s just like the poster. The Spring Show, the call for performers, the age groups and the showing times—7pm start, April 1st—and, right at the bottom, a note:

_Thank you for your interest! Please tear off the form below and fill in the relevant category. You can deposit your form at the reception desk, and we will get back to you shortly with the time and date of your audition. We look forward to seeing you perform!_

Hinata swallows—tries to, but his mouth is barren, a sandy, void wasteland.

He ratches in the bedsheets for his phone. It falls to the floor with a clatter, and Hinata snatches it up: 7:44pm. According to the schedule on the poster, the show opens at 7pm, and the age categories creep up at half-hour intervals from there. Hidden in amongst them are special performances—a song, a speech—and at 8:15pm, the first of several _special guest skaters_.

There are more, spread in and out over the three hours, but Hinata has no way of knowing when— _if_ —Kageyama will be skating. If he’s _first_ , in that first slot, Hinata will miss him.

He stands, stumbling to the wardrobe, slipping over loose leafs of paper as he goes, and he throws on the first clean clothes he finds. If he runs, _now_ , he might just make it.

The evening air is pleasantly warm, but it still mists with his breaths as he runs. He runs and runs until his chest aches, until he wheezes his breaths and his sides stitch, but still it is creeping past eight o’clock as he ducks through the main doors and ploughs to a stop against the reception desk.

“A little late for the show, kid,” the girl on the desk says. She flips the page of her magazine and pops a chocolate into her mouth. Hinata pants, hands braced on his knees as he sucks in a few desperate lungfuls of air. He can half-understand why they’d hire someone like Kageyama, if this is what they’re putting on reception.

She doesn’t even offer to help as he coughs, and only looks up at him when he finally speaks.

“I need,” he breathes, “a ticket. To the show.”

She frowns down at him.

“It’s already been on for an hour,” she says, slow, like Hinata is some kind of idiot. He shakes his head at her.

“Doesn’t—doesn’t matter. Please.”

“I dunno if I’m allowed to sell them now,” she says. “Let me check with my supervisor.”

“No!” He snaps, and she blinks at him. The clock behind her head is ticking its way towards ten past. “No, please, I need it now. I really, really need one like, right now.”

She is looking at him like he’s grown a third head. Hinata brandishes his money, waves the notes right up against the glass until she caves, reaching to pull a ticket from the pile.

“If I get in trouble—” she starts. Hinata snatches up the ticket and throws his money into the hatch.

“I’ll come back and tell you how sorry I am,” he says, and then he turns, running down the corridor. A man on the door gives him a puzzled, frowny look as he checks his ticket and Hinata bounces on the balls of his feet, peers through the little glass windows. The ice, for now, is empty, and there is a low hum of chatter as the crowd carry themselves through to the next act.

“Alright,” the man says, handing back the ticket, and from a stand he pulls a pamphlet, dropping it into Hinata’s wringing hands. “Enjoy the show.”

It takes a while to find a seat. There’s a lot of shuffling and shoving, grumbling from the people who have to stand to let him pass but, eventually, he finds an empty space somewhere in the middle of the stands. There he sits, and he folds the pamphlet against his lap as he waits.

Kageyama does not come on at 8:15. He doesn’t come on at 8:45 either, or at nine. Hinata sits through the routines and the song, the lulls in between as the stage is switched, and the speech, before a voice comes over the tannoy and the crowd falls quiet.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” it says, “first, I would like to thank you all, to the performers for their participation, and to the families and friends for their support. The show is drawing to a close, but before you leave, I would like to introduce one final guest.”

Hinata twists the pamphlet. It is disintegrating from all of his fiddling, falling to pieces, raining glossy paper scraps over his thighs. The crowd around him murmurs.

“Here to close the show,” the voice says, “please put your hands together for our final act, Kageyama Tobio.”

Hinata’s stomach lurches. A smattering of polite, anticipating applause echoes over the rink. It’s a different atmosphere, like this, nothing like the quiet nights the two of them have spent here, and Hinata can feel the weight of it crushing him.

There is no glare from the overhead lights as Kageyama steps onto the ice. There is only the spotlight to guide him, and even then the glare it casts is soft, pulling him around the rink as he meanders his path to the centre.

Even from here, Hinata can see he is trembling. There is effort in the tight line of his shoulders, a monumental strength to keep them from curling, shielding himself from the hundreds— _hundreds_ —of eyes watching him.

The applause dies down as he skates to a stop. He takes a big breath, and then another, and a third and still he doesn’t calm, not like he usually does. Hinata scoots right to the edge of his seat.

Kageyama shakes out his fingers. His face looks pale in the darkness, pinched, all tight and knotted and so much like that old Kageyama, like he looked the first time he let Hinata come and watch him.

“C’mon,” Hinata whispers, fisting his hands in his lap. “C’mon, Kageyama.”

He lifts his head.

His eyes settle on the crowd. They rest somewhere lower, around where Hinata usually sits, and there is a blind kind of panic in them as he blinks, slides his gaze to the left, and to the right, and the silence seems to stretch on forever as his eyes rove face after face without finding the one he is looking for.

“I’m right _here_ , stupid,” Hinata breathes, “look at me.”

Kageyama swallows. It is almost audible in the quiet that has settled, and Hinata knows he is running out of time, that the music will start any _second_ and if he can’t calm down—

—he stands up. The people either side of him grumble and one lady gives a loud, outraged scoff as Hinata knocks her drink from her hand and onto the floor. Kageyama’s head jerks, and his eyes search in the darkness. Hinata takes a big breath and cups his hands around his mouth.

“Oi, _Bakageyama!”_ He calls, and Kageyama’s eyes lock right on him. “If you don’t throw up, you’re not spinning fast enough!”

Something like a grin tugs at the corners of Kageyama’s mouth. He nods, and Hinata sits, and when Kageyama takes his next breath the trembling stops.

And then the music starts.

Kageyama doesn’t need the spotlight. All eyes would be on him even without it, from the first roll of his neck and on, with the sweeps of his arms and the long, languid glide of his skates. The music is soft, breezing through the speakers, so gentle and quiet that even from high up in the stands, Hinata can hear the whisper of Kageyama’s skates.

In a few places, he stumbles. Barely a stutter against the ice, so subtle Hinata doesn’t think anybody else will notice, too entranced as they all are. Nobody seems to be _breathing_ , not until Kageyama jumps, spins, and then they gasp as one.

He pulls the music along like always, dragging the notes in his wake, tapping the keys with the steps he dances on his toe picks, building the crescendo with the speed of his turns and the swings of his arms. Hinata would like to look around, to see every eye as it follows his path around the rink, but he can’t.

He can’t, because whenever he gets the chance, Kageyama is looking at him. He is seeking him out in the crowd time and time again, and Hinata doesn’t dare take his eyes off him for fear he will be lost in the sea of watching faces.

Instead, he smiles. He smiles and his eyes shine, and his face is a little wet but it’s not tears, it’s _not_ because he’s happy, so unspeakably happy that he can’t possibly be crying.

Only when Kageyama rounds off his skate do people applaud. And when they do, it’s _deafening_.

They surge up like a wave, big and mighty and roaring, and Kageyama blinks like he’s coming out of a trance. He bows under the weight of them all, bent low to duck beneath the crashing sea with quaking arms and trembling legs. Hinata claps the loudest, the clearest, and he hopes Kageyama can pick him out of the crowd now.

Hinata doesn’t remember moving. There is a blank space between standing before his folded up chair, clapping until his palms go numb and now, where he stumbles down the stairwell, skirts the inside of the barrier to find a gap, _any_ gap where Kageyama might step off the ice.

He finds it about the same time Kageyama does. He’s clipping his skate guards over his blades when Hinata spots him, and he has barely had time to straighten before Hinata crashes right into his chest.

They stumble back, air huffing out of his lungs as he does, and Hinata presses in as close as he can, wipes his leaking eyes against Kageyama’s shoulder and squeezes his arms around him.

“I told you,” he says, sucks in a breath, and then another, “I _told_ you they’d love you, stupid.”

Kageyama doesn’t say anything. For a moment, he doesn’t even move. And then slowly, ever so slowly he shifts, and his arms come up, and one hand skirts a tentative path along Hinata’s shoulders, hesitant, like he’s waiting to be pushed away.

“Hug me back.”

Kageyama does. He crushes Hinata against him, squeezes so tight he can barely even _breathe_ , and honestly? Kageyama could suffocate him right now, kill him dead, and Hinata still wouldn’t want to move.

The audience is still clapping, loud and booming in the busy rink. Hinata stretches up on his toes, right on the tips, tall enough to hook his chin over Kageyama’s shoulder and press his mouth right up against his ear, and over all the noise, over the whoops and the cheers and the raging, thunderous applause, he whispers, quiet as a mouse.

“I love you.”

* * *

The applause goes on.

It roars on and on forever, it seems, buffeting them from all sides as they stand by the barrier. Neither of them move. On his part, Hinata is a little too afraid to look Kageyama in the eye—why did he _say_ that? Why did he do that? Why is he so monumentally _stupid_?

There are an awful lot of questions, and Hinata has no answers. Kageyama is still hugging him, which he supposes must be a good thing, but he is stiff as a board, rigid from top to toe and perhaps Hinata should pull away now, pull and _run_ , as far as his legs will carry him. As far away from this situation as possible.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe Kageyama didn’t hear him. The crowd was so _loud_ , is still so loud, so maybe there’s a chance—small, impossibly small—that Kageyama missed what it was he’d said.

But he doesn’t think so.

He doesn’t, because Kageyama’s arms are drooping, dropping from around Hinata’s back and falling to his sides. Hinata lets his arms fall, too.

_This_ —this is exactly what he _didn’t_ want. There is a warmth blooming over his forehead as he steps back and it is familiar, burning, the steady glare of Kageyama’s eyes bruising into his skin. He was never supposed to tell Kageyama how he felt because it wasn’t his place, wasn’t what they were. They were friends, roommates, and there should never have been anything more.

But Hinata and his stupid heart, his stupid feelings and his big, _stupid_ mouth, just couldn’t keep things simple.

He takes a step back, and clears his throat.

“I mean,” he says. The burn of Kageyama’s gaze grows hotter, scalds deeper. “I mean, I loved—your performance! You were—you were really good. I should go now.”

“Hinata.”

“And—and I loved your outfit! What is that, silk? Blue suits you! You should—you should wear it all the time, it’s good. I need to leave, I think.”

“Shouyou.”

Hinata flinches.

“Dumbass, look at me, will you?”

Hinata peeks up through his hair. Sure enough, Kageyama is staring, just like he always does. With big, blown eyes and rosy cheeks, only this time, when Hinata meets his gaze, he doesn’t look away.

Instead, he leans the little space between them and kisses him.

If this were a movie, time would stop. Time would stop and they would kiss forever, with Kageyama’s hands warming the sides of his neck, thumbs stroking over his jaw and the music would be building to a climactic close, and on the other side of the screen the audience would be cheering, crying. They’d kiss and kiss and the screen would fade to black, and the credits would roll, and there they would stay—kissing, forever kissing, and that would be the end.

But it isn’t a movie.

Kageyama pulls away all too soon. The applause is starting to die down and people are standing, gathering their things and heading for the exit, and most—if not all—are blissfully unaware of what is happening by the edge of the rink.

“I—” Kageyama starts, stops, clears his throat and rubs his cold-blushed nose, “—you too.”

Hinata blinks at him.

“You what?”

“You too, I guess,” he says. His cheeks flame, and his eyes dance in the empty space between their feet.

He—what? Hinata shakes his head. This can’t be right, it can’t be; he must be misunderstanding something somewhere, because there is no way, no chance on this _earth_ that Kageyama likes him back. How could he possibly be so lucky?

“I don’t understand,” he says, because it’s true: he doesn’t understand at all. Kageyama is…well, he’s _Kageyama_ . He’s tall and he’s beautiful, he’s talented beyond measure, he’s cute and he’s fun and even at his most mind-numbingly _boring_ , Hinata still loves him.

And he is Hinata. He’s a little shy of useless, honestly, and he’s loud, boisterous, stupid to a fault, doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut and, apparently, has absolutely no control over his own feelings whatsoever.

Why, then, would Kageyama be even a little bit interested in him?

“I don’t just mean sex,” Hinata says, and to their left an outraged parent gasps. She claps both hands over her daughters ears and ushers her on, casting the dirtiest look Hinata has ever _seen_ over the pair of them. Kageyama’s lips tuck a little at the corners, and Hinata recognises the telltale twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

“Sorry,” Hinata says, bowing low as the lady passes him by. She harrumphs and turns away, mingling with the flow of leavers, and Hinata straightens up to punch Kageyama in the arm.

“That’s not _funny_ , _Bakageyama!”_

Kageyama snickers.

“Sorry,” he says, though Hinata knows that he isn’t.

“And I mean it,” he goes on. “I don’t mean like…in a...an _s-e-x_ way.” Kageyama’s mouth wobbles as Hinata casts a wary look around them, pressing in closer to keep their conversation private amongst the milling crowd. “I mean like…in all the ways.”

“All the ways.”

Hinata takes a shaky breath, then gives a hard, resolute nod.

“All the ways,” he says. Kageyama nods at him.

His eyes cast around, too, and Hinata watches them pass from impassive face to impassive face before they come back to settle on him. There is something…sturdy, to them, something deep and steady and sure. He stares, and then he leans in, closer and closer and closer, until his mouth comes to rest by Hinata’s ear.

“I like you,” he says, “in all the ways, too.”

Hinata doesn’t even have time to police the screech that bubbles out of him. It’s borne of shock, for the most part, but there is a hum of excitement to it too because Kageyama _likes_ him. He likes him, and—

Hinata punches him in the arm.

“Stupid,” he says, “ _idiot_ , since when?”

Kageyama blinks owlishly.

“Since…September, I guess?”

Hinata’s brain whizzes back through the months, from March to January where they barely talked at all, to December, Kageyama’s night time performance at the rink, through November, October, past every encounter they have had and it pulls to a stop in the stands, Hinata with his spine to the dasher, Kageyama’s hand pressed down the back of his jeans and his mouth latched to his neck.

Hinata wobbles where he stands. _September_. Six whole months. Kageyama has liked him—all of him, in all the ways—since September, and he never…never said a word. Never thought to _mention_ —

Hinata punches him again.

“You big,” punch, “stupid,” punch, “dumb,” _punch_ , “wh—why didn’t you say anything, huh?”

Kageyama’s mouth gapes, eyes pulled wide and he shimmies out of the way, beyond the reach of Hinata’s fist.

“Ow—stop, Jesus, I— _ouch_ —I thought you knew!”

Hinata stills with his arm mid-swing. Kageyama nurses his bicep, rubs it over with tentative fingers, and Hinata’s brows wrinkle.

“How was I supposed to know that?”

Kageyama looks at him like he’s grown another head. He sputters, and then he scowls, the biggest, deepest scowl Hinata has ever seen, which is saying an awful lot, really, because Kageyama has done a whole load of scowling in the last year.

“The sex,” he says, ticking it off on his finger, “the kissing, the _sleeping_ together, letting you watch me skate, all the cuddling, watching that shitty movie—.”

“— _Shrek_ is not a shitty movie—.”

“—It _is_. And I watch it every week because _you_ like it, and I cooked for you, did your laundry, helped you study. What did you _think_ that all meant?”

“That’s what friends do,” Hinata says. Kageyama raises a brow at him.

“You fuck all your friends?”

Somewhere beside them, somebody chokes.

“Well, okay, not that part,” he says, “but everything else—“

“You kiss all of your friends?”

“Well, no, but—“

“—sleep with them?”

“ _No_.”

“I thought,” Kageyama says, huffs. “I thought you knew. And I thought you like, _liked_ me back.”

Kageyama’s tongue goes all gooey over the word _liked_ , like it’s taking all of his focus to force it out and Hinata thinks, then, that it probably is. It’s a big, embarrassing thing to announce, even for _Hinata,_ so he can’t well imagine how difficult Kageyama is finding it.

“I did not,” he says, and Kageyama nods.

“I thought I was being obvious.”

“You were not.”

Kageyama squirms.

“I was trying to be.”

Hinata supposes, thinking back on it, that he could.. _.perhaps_ have worked things out for himself. There were all the signs Kageyama has pointed out—the sex, the kissing, the cuddling—and there are other things, too, like the mere fact that Kageyama was, for the most part, _comfortable_ around him, and of course, there was all that staring.

Maybe that should’ve been a giveaway, moreso when Hinata found himself doing it, too. The staring, the _blushing_ , the heat in his face and the swell of his chest; perhaps he should have known about then that he wasn’t alone, wasn’t the only one with Too Many Feelings.

“I even,” Kageyama says, and he waves a half-hearted hand towards the near-empty stands, “I even skated in the stupid Spring show for you—”

“—for me?” Hinata squeaks.

“Yeah, dumbass, for _you_. I figured...that’s why you were mad at me.”

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t _mad_ , idiot.”

It’s a long and embarrassing explanation, trying to tell Kageyama exactly why he hasn’t been speaking to him for the last three months, but to his credit, Kageyama takes it relatively well. Less angry than Hinata had anticipated.

“So I didn’t have to do the Spring show at all,” he says, once Hinata is done making his excuses.

“No, you totally did!” Hinata says, bouncing on his toes. “I mean, if you hadn’t, I never would’ve told you I liked you, and you’d never have told me you liked me, and we still wouldn’t be talking and then—then we’d move out next week and we’d never ever speak to each other again. That’d _suck_.”

Kageyama humphs, but—thankfully—he has no better argument to give. Instead, he bends the distance between them and kisses Hinata once more.

Hinata lets himself melt into it. He stumbles the tiny space between their toes and melds his chest against Kageyama’s, hands clamped behind his back to keep from touching. Because that’s all he wants to _do_ —to grip and grab, to hold, ruck up the hem of Kageyama’s shirt, find the heat of his skin, to keep him close just because he _can_. He’s allowed. Because Kageyama, against all possible reasoning, likes him, too.

But he can’t do it here.

The stands are mostly deserted, but there are volunteers in yellow vests creeping between the rows to snatch up litter, and Hinata isn’t convinced he could control himself if he starts something up now.

Kageyama sighs out into his mouth, and lifts his head back. Hinata swallows hard, and when he speaks, his voice comes out breathless.

“Home.”

* * *

The walk back is quiet. The air between them is tense, _deliciously_ so, heavy and weighty and pressing and Hinata drinks it in, lets it warm him in the cool Spring breeze. They steal glances, here and there, eyes bouncing off of one another and on the occasions they meet, they still look away, all hot-faced and red-cheeked, but there is a giddiness to every captured gaze.

Kageyama leads them to the bedroom. He does so with Hinata’s hand held loose in his fingers and Hinata follows blindly, watches the pretty pink skin blooming above Kageyama’s collar and bites back a strangled hum of joy.

If he has anything to say about the mess, because _god_ has Hinata left a mess, he doesn’t voice it. He tip-toes over it all, carves a path to his bed—his, because Hinata’s is still strewn with clothes and cushions and papers—and when he gets there he turns, and he sits, and his fingers trail from Hinata’s palm to his wrist, his elbow, drag through the thick air to settle on his waist.

And there’s that big, wobbly smile, curving a wavy line over his face, and there’s a glow in his eyes, all big and bright and shiny and the most beautiful blue Hinata has ever _seen_ , and the fingers against his hips are warm but they pinch, too, nipping into his skin.

“You look stupid,” Hinata snickers, jolting as Kageyama pulls him in between his knees. He leans up, and Hinata’s eyes drop closed at the tickle of lips over the skin of his neck. Hinata curls his hands into Kageyama’s hair—he’s kept the back cropped, but the top has grown longer, long enough to twist around his fingers. Kageyama hums against him.

“I’m _happy_.”

They’ve had sex hundreds of times—thousands, _millions_ , maybe—but none of that, not one single moment, has sufficiently prepared him for this.

Every touch feels impossibly close, impossibly warm; Kageyama’s skin is too soft and too rough against his own, fingers smooth and calloused all the same, dragging and sliding where they tease over his thighs, push them up, open him out. His lips are wet but they are coarse, too, dented by the press of his teeth, and Hinata writhes where they work him.

Kageyama mouths him open with lips and tongue and fingers and Hinata pants, whines, one hand fisted in the bedsheets and the other curled into Kageyama’s hair.

There is none of the usual dirty confidence in Kageyama’s touches. He is quiet, working with dark, hooded eyes and a quiet tongue—now and then a hum slips through, something soft and quiet and contented, but there is nothing rough, nothing sordid, and Hinata bites back the expletives bubbling at the back of his throat for fear of ruining the atmosphere.

Kageyama laps him until he can barely even breathe. He can hear himself, just, in distant, strangled cries and moans and whimpers, and each time he grows too loud or too close Kageyama soothes him with dancing fingers or the steady press of his palm. And Hinata lets himself float, glide on a sea of complete, mind-numbing bliss.

“Okay?”

Hinata blinks, and lifts his head from the pillows. Kageyama is peaking up at him over the swell of his cock where it strains against his stomach—it looks _ridiculous,_  and the picture tickles him, enough to push the tiniest bubble of laughter past his lips. He nods, and Kageyama tilts his head, eyes sliding shut as he kisses the inside of Hinata’s thigh.

Two long, thin fingers slide back inside him. Hinata’s breath stills and his back arcs, a neat bow off the mattress, and Kageyama’s spare hand smooths to splay low on his stomach.

“— _Yama_ —” Kageyama hums, pushes deeper, “I— _hah_ —I want y—you now.”

“A little more,” Kageyama breathes, sliding a third finger alongside the rest. Hinata keens.

“I’m ready,” He pants, rolling into each jerk of Kageyama’s wrist, “Tobio, I’m ready, c’mon.”

“I know.”

Kageyama doesn’t stop. Instead, he hikes Hinata’s hips up off the mattress, hands cupped against the bottom of his back and Hinata groans, lifts both arms up over his head to grasp at his pillow while Kageyama _dives_ for him.

He laps at his hole with more enthusiasm than Hinata has ever seen from him. Hinata feels the press of his tongue worming against him, in him, and there is pressure from his lips where they suck at him and _god_ , oh god, it’s almost too much—too much. Hinata yells, squeezes his eyes, and Kageyama grunts something low that vibrates over the tight ring of muscle.

Hinata can feel the rhythmic jerk of the mattress towards the bottom of the bed, and it isn’t _him_ , because the way he’s moving against Kageyama’s tongue is too jerky, too irregular, and he can only imagine what Kageyama is doing where he lies. He’ll be hard—Hinata is willing to bet real, actual money on it—and Hinata can picture him, eyes squeezed closed as he works; his face will be soft, slack, save for the pinched skin of his brow, because Kageyama always, always frowns when he’s concentrating.

Hinata can picture the line of his jaw, strong and square where it stands from his neck, and in his mind the muscles bunch, pulsing with each sweep and poke of his tongue. His shoulders roll high by his ears, straining as he holds up Hinata’s weight, keeps him high to his mouth, and the muscles down his back flex—they roll beneath the skin, undulating like waves, tensing to rock his hips where he’s definitely, most definitely grinding himself on the mattress.

Suddenly, the picture in his head isn’t enough.

Hinata twists his neck to the side. It’s uncomfortable, strains his neck in the worst way, but it’s _worth_ it, because from here, Hinata can see the way Kageyama’s hips are jerking, rutting against the bed-sheets slow and steady, relieving a little pressure while he turns Hinata upside down.

“Enough,” Hinata gasps, reaching to pull at Kageyama’s hair. “Enough, God, ‘Yama, _please_.”

Kageyama’s hips still. His mouth does, too, and with one last, long kiss pressed—embarrassingly—right between his cheeks, Kageyama lets Hinata’s hips fall to the mattress and crawls up over him.

He’s hot, burning, skin molten where it brushes across Hinata’s. He trails his lips in a wet line from Hinata’s collar and up his neck, over his jaw, to his mouth, and there he stops, catches his lip between his teeth and sucks at him. Hinata tilts his jaw up into the pull of Kageyama’s teeth, and when he lets go, he lets his mouth hang open, groans at the slow probe of Kageyama’s tongue between his lips.

Kageyama’s hips nudge up against him. He’s hard, smooth skin slick and wet with pre-come and spit where he slides back and forth over Hinata’s hole.

“Condom?” He asks, and Hinata, like always, moves to shake his head.

And then he remembers the wrappers in the bin.

“Have you…” Kageyama’s hips haven’t stopped their slow ministrations and it’s a little hard to concentrate. “Have you like...been with anyone else? Since last time?”

Kageyama cocks his head.

“No?” He says, and then his cheeks bruise a little pink. “I—I told you, I thought you knew I liked you, stupid. Why would I be with anyone else?”

Hinata smacks him upside the head.

“Don’t call me _stupid_ when your dick is touching me, Kageyama!”

Kageyama draws a little space between their hips and knocks his forehead to Hinata’s—probably a little harder than strictly necessary.

“Stupid.” He settles himself back down and Hinata sighs, arching himself up against Kageyama’s touch.

“Funny,” he says. “If you haven’t been with anyone—what was,” Hinata pauses. He probably shouldn’t mention it—it’s _weird_ , isn’t it, to say he’s noticed the condom packets in the waste? But Kageyama is looking at him now with his eyebrows raised, and there’s still a slow, rhythmic pump of his hips stringing Hinata’s mind a little too far away from him, and the words tumble out before Hinata can check them.

Kageyama stills again.

“I,” he starts, “I use them on toys, sometimes.”

Hinata’s head goes blank.

It’s not like it’s a _surprise_ , that Kageyama has been using his collection to get himself off in the months Hinata has been giving him nothing, but it’s...it’s something else entirely to hear him say it. Hinata groans, a little too loud, and curls his arms over Kageyama’s neck to kiss him..

“No, then,” he says. “No condom. Just you.”

There’s a long, giddy moment of waiting while Kageyama sits back, reaches for the discarded bottle of lube and spreads some over his cock. Hinata watches him pull at himself, listens to the hitch in his breath, to the creak of the bed springs as he shuffles on his knees, to the wheeze that squeezes from his own chest as Kageyama slips a couple of fingers in him and scissors, spreads them—just enough to be sure—before he topples his weight over Hinata’s chest once more and guides the head of his cock to his hole.

Hinata bites his breath in his lungs. Perhaps it’s because it’s been so long since the last time, or perhaps it’s the sheer weight of it, the meaning that they both know behind every move they’re making, this time, but for whatever reason, it’s almost _too_ overwhelming. Kageyama carves a slow path into him, and Hinata holds his back strained up off the mattress, hips canted to let Kageyama in.

“Shit,” he gasps. Kageyama only nods, brow scrunched as he pushes, presses until he’s all the way in. Hinata’s lungs are starting to burn and his eyes are starting to sting. It’s too much—all of it, Kageyama inside him, above him, Kageyama _loving_ him and knowing that Hinata loves him in return, Kageyama staying with him, not only in spite of his stupid feelings but because of them.

It’s too much, and there are traitorous tears tracking his cheeks before Hinata can stop them.

Kageyama’s big, warm palm settles against the side of his face.

“Okay?” He asks again. Hinata gives his biggest, most watery smile and nods. He rolls his hips back down onto the mattress, dragging Kageyama out of him, and when he presses back up Kageyama pushes down, and the air between their mouths mists with their groans.

“I’m okay.” He says. Kageyama thumbs away the tears from one cheek and kisses the other.

“You look stupid,” he says. Hinata grins. He hugs his hands around Kageyama’s back, hooks his knees against his hips and holds him as close as he can get. Kageyama supports his weight on one elbow, curls the other arm around Hinata’s back, too.

Hinata presses his smile to Kageyama’s shoulder and lets his eyes squeeze closed at the first few shallow rocks of his hips.

“I’m _happy_.”

* * *

##  ** _Epilogue_** _##_

“ _Please_ tell me that’s the last box.”

Hinata plops it down onto the bed and rubs a hand over his brow. Beside him, Kageyama stretches, fingertips pressed to their low ceiling. He looks up and frowns, knocks his knuckles to the plaster.

“This is a tiny flat for tiny people.”

“It’s a perfectly normal sized flat for perfectly normal sized people, _Bakageyama_.”

Kageyama reaches out to flick at his forehead.

“You would think so, shorty,” he says, sniggers at Hinata’s frown, “and yeah, that’s the last one.”

Hinata heaves a sigh of relief. The flat, admittedly, is a little small—but with no more student finance to aid them, it was...all they could really afford. And it’s cute, Hinata thinks; quirky, with it’s little rooms, tiny rounded windows, and, in the least, the floors are real wood. Very real, very bare wood.

“Man,” Hinata croons, “our own _apartment_.”

Beside him, Kageyama hums. Hinata risks a glance at him; he’s eyeing up the walls and the floor, the bed, peering towards the open door to the kitchen, and though he is frowning, there is a little bubble of light in his eyes—it’s excitement, Hinata knows him well enough now to see that. Excitement at their stupid, tiny apartment. _Theirs_.

“We should unpack,” he says. Hinata groans, flopping down next to their boxes. The bedsprings give a loud creak.

“We should buy a new mattress,” he says. When Kageyama doesn’t reply, Hinata lifts his head to find Kageyama eyeing him with his arms folded over his chest, one brow arched up on his forehead.

“With what money?”

Ah. Yes. A small issue. It’s not that they aren’t _getting_ any money, because between them their income is...enough, it’s just, they aren’t getting any _spare_ money. Nothing is disposable, between rent and bills and basic supplies, food, commuting, and the added cost of Kageyama’s coach—they’ve got nothing extra for trivial things like mattresses.

Hinata feels a little bad about it all, honestly. If he hadn’t failed his second year classes, he’d still be sponging off of his student loan, and if he hadn’t failed his second year classes, Kageyama would never have dropped out of _his_ course and he’d still have his free money, too.

But he did fail, and he did drop out, and Kageyama did follow him like the big idiot he is, and here they are. Here they are, in their tiny one-bed flat with it’s white walls and it’s round windows, bare floors and barren furnishings.

But, he thinks, if he _hadn’t_ failed, if they’d both stayed in university, both kept their student money, he wouldn’t be working in the sports shop—he wouldn’t have his employee discount, wouldn’t have met his co-workers, wouldn’t have discovered the literal _best_ noodle bar on the planet thanks to said co-workers—and Kageyama....

Well, Kageyama wouldn’t have a skating coach.

Because he’d still be working at the rink, and he’d still be skating in the dead of night, with nobody but Hinata for company.

Kageyama heaves the boxes off the bed and discards them with the rest on the floor. He sits, and the warmth of his palm finds Hinata’s thigh.

Perhaps he should be over it by now. It’s been _years_ , almost three, since their mutual confession, and Hinata thinks he should maybe, probably be past the honeymoon period. He shouldn’t swoon and fawn over every little look and every little touch, but he does, can’t help it; everything Kageyama does sets fire breathing in his bones, bleeds the air from his chest and stutters his heart behind his ribs.

He’s still painfully, stupidly in love, and Hinata half-hopes the giddiness of it all will never, ever change.

Kageyama squeezes at his leg.

“Unpack,” he says, and Hinata rolls to his side, muffles his groan against Kageyama’s hip.

“Five more minutes, _mom_.”

Kageyama pinches at him.

“ _Now_ , dumbass.”

##

Even with all of their things unpacked, the apartment looks a little bare. Better, but still a touch on the side of empty. Hinata surveys it all with his hands on his hips and sweat on his brow, while Kageyama wedges the last couple of boxes together in the pile building against the wall.

He’s a little sweaty, too, a sheen over his cheeks and down his neck and when he stands, rubbing the back of his wrist over his forehead, the long hair of his fringe splays out, damp and sticky, at odd angles.

Hinata bites back a grin.

He looks _cute_.

Hinata tells him so, and Kageyama’s resounding, “thanks,” comes thick and little choked, painted with a blush right beneath his eyes. Hinata grins.

He’s still not _great_ at the whole...compliments thing, and Hinata has long since come to the conclusion that he’s never, ever going to fix that—because it’s not a problem that _needs_ fixing. It’s just...Kageyama. It’s a part of who he is, this big, embarrassed lump, and Hinata has learned, over time, that it’s...it’s okay, if Kageyama gets a little red around the edges when he hears something nice.

“What time is it?” Kageyama asks. Hinata blinks, and checks his phone.

“Nearly six,” he says, “why?”

“Training.”

A tremulous smile wobbles its way over Hinata’s face. This is one thing he hasn’t given up—in the last almost-three years, he hasn’t once stopped watching Kageyama skate. Not at the old rink, and not now, in a new, bigger, fancier rink, sometimes in broad daylight, most times with other skaters. He’s never stopped, and he doesn’t think he ever will.

“What time?”

“Now—Ukai’ll kick my ass if I’m late again.”

They don’t waste more time, after that. They both change into something warm—the weather is a little on the warm side, for February, but there’s still a sweet kind of chill in the air, and besides that, the stands in the rink can be awfully cold.

The walk is full of chatter. Kageyama has his bag heaved on one shoulder, and the other hand is caught up tight in Hinata’s, shoved in his pocket to keep warm. Hinata spends most of the journey deliberately-accidentally ramming Kageyama’s arm with his shoulder, over and over until Kageyama starts shoving him in return. By the time they get to the rink, they are each of them trying to elbow the other out of the way to get through the front door first.

Kageyama wins, but only just.

He abandons Hinata at the edge of the rink with a quick kiss to his puffed up, pouted cheeks, and while he leaves to change, Hinata stands with his elbows hooked on the barrier.  

It’s not unusual to find other people here, just watching. Practices like these aren’t _private_ ; people can spectate if they want, and often times it’s family, or friends, or partners of the skaters taking up space in the stands.

Today, however, a small crowd is forming.

He’s seen little fanclubs like this before, on the days when Kageyama has been practicing with some of Ukai’s more well-known skaters. An awful lot of his pupils are _professionals_ , like Kageyama, who skate in ice shows to make a little money on the side. But hidden amongst the coals are a few gems—skaters that compete for sport.

Hinata watches the group while he waits for Kageyama to start warming up. They’re noisy, but it’s...a low, humming kind of noise, like bees in a hive, and Hinata can’t make out a word any of them are saying. Every word seems to be bouncing off of another, buzzing round and round in circles and growing in volume with each new circuit.

Hinata shakes them to the background, and looks out on the ice.

Kageyama is stretching. Beside him, Ukai stands with his arms folded over his chest, frowning out at the—growing—crowd.

“Ignore them,” Ukai is saying, as Kageyama straightens back up. He hooks an arm over his head and stretches to one side. “Just put ‘em to the back of your head, okay?”

Hinata steps up on his toes and leans over the barrier, twisting to get a look at Kageyama’s face. He’s all...pale and gross-looking, or about as gross-looking as Kageyama can get. There’s a muscle ticking in his jaw, bunching where he grins his teeth.

He still _hates_ being watched. He hates it, and that, Hinata thinks, is another thing that’s probably never going to change. He still gets horribly, sickeningly nervous, but the difference _now_ is that...he does things anyway. He travels to ice shows, performs in front of hundreds, and even with his stomach twisting and his heart hammering, he skates.

He skates, and time and time again, they _love_ him.

“It’s fine.”

Kageyama shakes out his arms and his legs, and scratches his blades against the ice. Ukai claps him on the shoulder.

“They’re not here for you,” he says, “so don’t panic.”

Hinata frowns at that. It’s not like he’d actually thought, until now, that the buzzing, writhing crowd even _would_ be here for Kageyama, but now that he knows they aren’t, all he can wonder is: why the hell not? Why would they _not_ want to watch Kageyama skate?

And it also begs the question: who the hell _are_ they here for?

Hinata doesn’t dwell on it too long. He doesn’t, because Ukai is pushing Kageyama out for his warm-up laps, and Hinata always struggles to look elsewhere once Kageyama starts moving.

Ukai, on the other hand, is looking at his watch, and the frown on his face digs deeper.

Even just warming up, Kageyama is fluid as ever. Hinata watches hims glide, cut a path around the rink, around other training skaters, watches him twist stretch his legs and twist his torso, give a few, easy spins, and then he gears up—Hinata knows what’s coming, he can see it in the glint in Kageyama’s eyes, in the speed of his skate, and then he’s kicking his toe to the ice and he’s _soaring_.

There’s one spin, and two, and _three_ before he lands with a clean _chink_ , arms spread at his sides to keep his balance.

The crowd _screams_.

Kageyama starts and wobbles, and Hinata darts his gaze to the waiting audience. They’re yelling, some of them are _crying_ , real, crocodile tears and now that Hinata is looking, really looking at them, he can see they’re all holding little signs, or flowers, or teddy bears, as though they were at a real show.

And none of them are looking at Kageyama.

Instead, they’re looking at _him_. But they can’t be, because he is nobody remarkable, doing nothing remarkable to be screamed at or cried at, and, confused, he twists his head to look around.

“You’re _late_ ,” Ukai is saying, and his eyes are turned, too, the heel of his blade dug into the ice to steady himself.

“Sorry, sorry~”

Hinata stares, stares at the newcomer, at the reason for the tens of screaming girls with their shower of gifts, and the blood in his veins runs cold.

“We missed our train,” he says, scratching his head, and pointing a thumb at the man standing beside him. Even now, sounding about as far from sorry as sorry could be, his voice has a warm, heady quality to it—the kind of tone that could and _does_ make people swoon. Hinata’s head spins, and he digs his fingers into the barrier to steady himself.

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t care,” Ukai says. “Get changed, I don’t wanna waste anymore of my time.”

Ukai’s eyes turn back to the ice, but nobody elses do. Every single big, blown pupil in the rink is trained on the new, horribly familiar face.

Oikawa Tooru shifts hooded eyes from Ukai to the ice, past every still, watching skater, all the way to where Kageyama stands, slack-jawed and staring right back at him.

“Tobio,” he says, waves a hand. “It’s been a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anybody PANICS no there is going to be no love triangle no affair no any of that would I ever 
> 
> SO my fun linkies: 
> 
> -[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG31sjv5tS8&t=31s) is the programme I imagined Kags skating in front of Hinata's friends  
> -[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USLUuaw0ZDU) is the programme he skates at the Spring show  
> -[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptLRNVRA9ik) is the programme that inspired the title of the chapter (my personal favourite it's cute AND hilarious)  
> -and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eeI8-rhvI) is the programme that inspired the title of the fic 
> 
> Once again, thank you SO much everyone, and for anymore comments/kudos/bookmarks etc. This fic has been a lot of fun and I'm glad I'm finally bringing you the end!! (kinda oops.) If you want to chat some more or have any questions, feel free to talk to me @ [someone-stole-my-shoes](http://someone-stole-my-shoes.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> There we have it! Thank you so much for reading, and for any comments/kudos/bookmarks/whatever, and also a HUGE thanks to Esselle and CheekyBrunette for listening to my constant whinging for the last few weeks as this disaster spiralled further and further out of my control.
> 
> Additionally: [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WN4UNO-6Ow&t=5s) is the programme the chapter title comes from and I am wildly In Love 
> 
> Additionally also: come join me on tumblr @ someone-stole-my-shoes if u wanna cry abt kagehina with me


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